by Lucy Dillon
‘I need the loo,’ Hattie announced, wiping tarry mascara smears from under her eyes with the side of her finger. ‘Where is it?’
Lorna touched her arm. ‘Walk to the back; it’s by the coats. We’ll wait here for you, OK?’
She and Sam watched as Hattie marched back inside, her skinny legs bird-like under her padded jacket. She probably hadn’t been eating, Lorna thought. The worry must have been awful, weighing on her shoulders, day after day.
Ryan. It just didn’t make sense. Her heart rate was still racing. What a total fucking idiot. How could he do that to Jess? She was the ideal wife. His soul mate, but not in that suffocating way their parents had been. She was kind, professional, long-suffering, gorgeous …
‘So what’s happened?’ Sam sank down on the wall next to Lorna and dropped his voice. He seemed concerned, brotherly. ‘Boyfriend trouble?’
Lorna considered for a moment; should she tell Sam? Hattie hadn’t exactly sworn her to secrecy, and who else knew Ryan and Jessica? No one knew them like she and Sam did. And Sam might know what the hell was going on.
That thought didn’t cheer her.
‘Hattie caught Ryan with another woman.’
The twinkle left Sam’s eyes instantly. ‘What? You’re joking! Ryan? Is she sure?’
Lorna shook her head, watching his expression for clues. None of it made sense. ‘Of course she is. He’s her dad.’
‘What did she see?’
‘Secret date in a coffee shop. Blonde girl, younger, the usual clichés. Ryan didn’t see her. He doesn’t know she knows.’
He let out a long breath. ‘Wow. And what’s she going to do?’
‘She doesn’t know. Well, I don’t know what to do. I can’t imagine how much strain she’s been under!’
‘Poor kid.’ Sam made a tsk noise, gazing back at the red neon dragon over the door. ‘Poor kid.’
Lorna looked at him closely. ‘Do you know anything about this?’
‘Me? What? No, no idea.’ Was Sam’s expression suddenly shifty? ‘I’ve barely seen Ryan since the christening. What with leaving … leaving London, dealing with the farm.’
She wanted to ask him more, but Hattie was coming back, her long pale hair making her look like a miserable angel as she edged her way between two parked cars.
Sam spoke quickly under his breath. ‘So what are you going to do? Are you going to tell Jess?’
‘I’ll have to, won’t I?’ Lorna felt sick.
‘Why not ask Jess to drive out and collect Hattie tomorrow, then tell her together? It’s always better to do that stuff in person.’ He touched her arm, as if speaking from experience. ‘I just can’t believe this. Maybe there’s an explanation?’
‘Like what?’ Lorna felt hopelessly inadequate. This wasn’t anything she’d experienced at home. In their family, men didn’t cheat on you, they worshipped the ground you walked on until you died, and then they pined away, missing you with every breath.
Tiffany was way more knowledgeable about this kind of thing, she thought. Sophie Hollande doubtless had a few choice strategies for dealing with cheating husbands. Maybe Tiff could advise.
Lorna sighed. ‘It’d be nice if there was an explanation. But from what I hear, there usually isn’t.’
Chapter Fourteen
Lorna promised Hattie she’d sleep on it before she rang Jess. Not that she slept – she lay wide awake, with Hattie’s shattering words going round her head on a loop. Just a few words, and everything flipped upside down. She struggled to compose a bearable way of telling Jess, but her mind kept going back to the day Ryan told the Larkhams that he’d got their brilliant elder daughter pregnant.
Everything had changed after that. And it had only taken a handful of words on that occasion too.
Ryan had worn a jacket, as if it might make a difference; his shoulders at least looked grown-up. Trapped on the sofa, because no one had warned her this was about to go down, Lorna had watched the four of them as if it was a film, not real life happening right there in front of the six o’clock news on mute, with the ice-cream van chimes pealing outside. A bad film, at that, since neither her parents, nor Ryan and Jess, seemed familiar with the lines they had to say. Ryan stammered through their plans to keep the baby while Jess gripped his hand and gazed at her stunned parents from under her thick dark fringe.
‘I love Jessica, Mr Larkham,’ he’d said, over and over. It hadn’t crossed anyone’s mind that he might not. ‘I’m going to make everything right. For ever.’
Dawn light smudged the wall opposite the window, and in her memory Lorna saw the scene laid out in a tableau like a highly coloured Victorian morality painting. The defiant young couple who already looked like a family unit, the bewildered father, the deeply embarrassed younger sister finally realising what had been going on when the phone was constantly engaged, next door’s cat sloping back home with the gossip. And their beautiful mother, sitting there in her painting shirt, curiously glassy. That was where Lorna’s attention had been transfixed: the strange absence of her mother, and the way her dad kept glancing anxiously at her, not at Jess.
Rudy pawed at the sofa as the town hall clock chimed six, and Lorna let him sneak up on to her duvet again, because replaying that weird day, seventeen years ago, was taking her down some other alleyways, into feelings she hadn’t let herself remember in a long while. The emotions were sharp again now, though, over-tangy like the synthetic strawberry tarts in the café, tarts she’d never eaten elsewhere in case they weren’t as good. She’d felt sick when she’d heard Dad talk about the job he’d been offered the following term in Hay-on-Wye. She didn’t want to move away from Sam. It had been proper, I-can’t-breathe panic, because how could she tell anyone what she felt about him? And guilt – guilt that she was thinking about herself, even in the middle of her sister’s drama. Worst of all the unpleasant palette of fresh emotions had been a new shame – that even as Jess might be ruining her life, Lorna was experiencing a spicy kind of excitement at the drama of it, a curiosity about what might happen next.
And that was the first time she’d pulled herself up short in shock, because even then, at thirteen, she’d had the sense that this wasn’t something good inside her. It felt bad and wrong, but at the same time …
Lorna stroked Rudy as he buried himself into her side, and she dragged her mind back to the present.
Hattie had to have got it wrong. It didn’t make sense. Ryan had stuck by Jess exactly as he’d promised. Every anniversary, every birthday, he’d bought her a new charm for her bracelet, and he’d loved her in the same reliable, tea-in-bed, clear-to-see, simple way. Why would he cheat? When did he have time in his car-cleaning rota?
They make time, said a voice in her head. Especially the boring ones.
Lorna texted her sister after breakfast, and at ten to eleven, Jess’s black Golf pulled up outside the gallery, as Lorna was loading yet another pile of towels into the washing machine in the kitchen. Jess reverse parked in one confident movement into a tiny space Lorna would have driven straight past, and got out, gazing around her at a high street that was coming back to life in her memories. When Jess saw the goldfish sign hanging next door where the gift shop had been, she looked at it for a few beats, then smiled affectionately as if remembering something nice.
High above, Lorna watched Jess smile, and her stomach knotted up. She looked so happy – a strong woman, capable, loving, in control of her world.
‘Is that her?’ asked Hattie, and Lorna said, ‘Looks like it,’ in as normal a voice as she could manage.
Tiffany had taken the dogs out, and Joyce and Hattie were sitting on the sofa knitting. Joyce had offered to get Hattie started on a square, to give her something to do, and now Hattie was six rows down. The stitches were tight and tense, but neat.
She stopped and looked at Lorna. The mood in the kitchen had been calm, but now Hattie’s nerves were almost visible, radiating off her the same way Rudy’s coat rippled with anxiety.
Joyce�
�s needles clicked on unperturbed, thickening the navy line of her striped dog coat, loop by calm loop.
‘Have you dropped a stitch?’ she asked, leaning over to inspect Hattie’s knitting without stopping her own movement. ‘Oh, that’s easily fixed. Maybe we could loosen this out a bit too …’ She took the needles from Hattie, showing her where the gap was and then flipping it back with a delicate probe of the needle tip. When Joyce gave Hattie the needles she carried on again, as if she could knit away the trembling in her hands. She wrapped the trailing wool several times around her thin fingers, doubling, tripling the tension.
Lorna didn’t want to wait for the doorbell. ‘I’ll go down,’ she said, and Hattie looked relieved.
Joyce’s deft fingers kept knitting.
Lorna opened the front door to see Jess checking her phone, and she smiled as she looked up from it, which made Lorna feel even worse because she knew it would be Ryan she’d be texting, to confirm she’d arrived safely.
‘Hi!’ she said. ‘I feel as if I’ve stepped back in time – can you believe that terrible butcher’s is still going over the road?’
‘I know,’ said Lorna. ‘I think it must be a front for something.’
‘Do you want to tell me what this is about now?’ she said brightly. ‘Before I come in?’
‘Um …’
‘I take it it’s something to do with Hattie?’ Jess nodded upwards. ‘Whatever it is she’s done, I’m not going to go mad, but tell me now, before I see her, so I can get my face prepared.’
When Lorna didn’t reply at once, Jess’s breezy manner disappeared, and Lorna could tell she’d been practising it on the way over. Hattie, and her happiness, was one of the few chinks in her armour.
Suddenly Lorna really didn’t want to take her sister upstairs, to explode her whole world in front of an audience. ‘Listen, why don’t we go for a coffee?’
Jess tried a brave smile. It didn’t come off. ‘Really? It’s that bad?’
Lorna pulled her jacket from the peg by the door. ‘Let’s go for a walk. Coffee’s the one thing that’s improved round here.’
They wandered down the high street, past the butcher’s and the cafés they remembered and the delis and glitzy nail bars that definitely hadn’t been part of Longhampton’s shopping experience when they’d been teenagers, and turned towards the town gardens, where the flower beds glowed with early spring colour, bulbous tulips waving above the purple pansies like cheerful deely-boppers.
Lorna bought Jess a cappuccino from the coffee cart parked next to the iron gates and they followed the slow-moving parade of dog walkers and pushchairs around the paths, until they reached the Victorian bandstand, scene of much teenage drinking and now a Heritage Beacon.
‘Blimey, they’ve cleaned this up,’ Jess observed as they settled themselves on the recently repainted steps. ‘What happened to the graffiti about Donna Phillips?’
‘Who knows?’ Lorna poured sugar into her latte. ‘She’s probably a councillor now. Her first act of power being to remove her personal details from the bandstand.’
‘Ha!’ Jess leaned back, looking around the park. ‘This is a lot nicer than I remember.’
‘This bit is. Others … not so much.’
‘Right, let’s have it.’ Jess sighed and hugged her knees. ‘Hit me with the bad news. Is it about the gallery? Are you in debt already? Have you got the Revenue after you?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Are you ill?’
‘No!’ Lorna twisted round to stare at her sister. ‘That’s your first assumption? One, I’ve messed up my taxes; two, I’m ill?’
‘I just want to get that out of the way. Is Hattie …? Oh, no, she’s not pregnant, is she?’ Jess’s expression suddenly tightened. ‘I mean, as far as I know there’s no boyfriend on the scene but … I know I can’t exactly be mad with her, but you never want your kids to make the same mistake as … Not that she was a mistake …’
She knuckled her own head, and Lorna was glad they weren’t having this conversation in the kitchen, with Hattie there.
‘I’m not saying Hattie was a mistake,’ said Jess firmly. ‘She was the best thing that’s ever happened to me and Ryan. The best. Apart from Milo and Tyra, obviously. Equal best.’
‘Hattie isn’t pregnant.’
Jess’s shoulders slumped with relief. ‘Thank God. Don’t take that the wrong way. But she’s got so much ahead of her – her last report from school was outstanding. Did I tell you she’s going for county netball trials next term?’
‘You said. I know, she’s a bright girl. She’s great.’
‘So what’s the matter? Hattie’s fine, you’re fine …’
It was clear that Ryan didn’t even figure on her list of potential crises. Lorna took a deep breath and steeled herself but before she could speak, Jess groaned. ‘Oh, no. Don’t tell me Hattie wants a dog? She was going on and on about that dachshund of—’
‘No!’ She had to get it out. ‘It’s Ryan. Hattie told me that she saw Ryan in Hereford a few weeks ago with a woman. They were having coffee, they looked very …’ How had it looked? Was it fair to put words into Hattie’s mouth? She hadn’t described exactly what she’d seen, and Lorna hadn’t pushed her too hard – how could she? ‘It wasn’t a business meeting,’ she finished awkwardly.
‘What?’ Jess had resumed drinking her cappuccino, and she paused with it halfway to her lips. ‘Ryan?’
Lorna nodded.
‘I think you’ve got some wires crossed. Ryan hasn’t been anywhere near Hereford.’ Jess shook her head, dismissing it. ‘Neither has Hattie, come to think of it.’
‘She was sent over there for work a few weeks ago. She saw Ryan in a Costa. In the window. Holding hands with a young blonde woman.’
‘No. That’s not … Is she absolutely sure it was him?’
‘I think she’d recognise her own dad.’
‘And did he see her?’ She corrected herself. ‘This man.’
Lorna shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
Jess leaned back. ‘She must have made a mistake. Ryan’s been mad busy with work this past month. No, it must be someone who looks like him.’
‘Hattie’s adamant it was. That’s why she’s been so stressed. She hasn’t known how to tell you, or whether she should.’
‘But she told you ?’
‘Easier than telling you.’
Jess slumped. ‘True. So how long have you known about this?’
‘Only since last night. Sam and I took her out for dinner – at a new place, used to be that café with the twins? We were talking about how you and Ryan were such a well-matched couple, how we knew you’d get married, even then, and …’ Lorna heard it in her head, from Hattie’s anguished point of view. It must have been like punching a bruise. ‘It was too much for her.’
Jess turned away and stared out at the park. ‘Well, yes, obviously, if that’s what she thinks she saw but … honestly, Lorna, she’s made a mistake. Poor Hattie, worrying about how to tell me. So that’s what that weird behaviour’s been about. Poor baby.’
Lorna side-eyed her big sister. Jess wasn’t even considering there might be something it in. But then her whole marriage was built on Ryan’s honourable nature. Their amazing bond, the one she’d waved in the doubters’ faces for nearly seventeen triumphant years. In a way she was relieved Jess hadn’t broken down at the news, but this calmness was unsettling in a different way. Could Hattie have been wrong? Would she really get that upset if she wasn’t sure?
‘Jess,’ she started tentatively. ‘You know, if there has been, um … If Ryan has done something stupid, then you can always talk to me. I won’t judge or anything. I’m always here for you.’
But Jess carried on staring out at the park, her eyes fixed on two old people walking two even older basset hounds towards the footpath that led up into the woodland area. All four were moving in happy slow motion, ears and chins swinging.
‘I know, Lorn,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’
Without turning her head, she put her arm round her shoulder. ‘Poor Hattie’s been a bit neglected lately, with me and Ryan running around after the littlies. Bet that’s what this is all about. I’ll take her out this week, spend some quality time with her.’
The sun emerged from behind a cloud, sparkling on Jess’s impressive selection of diamond rings just under Lorna’s nose. One for each child, a stack of adoring gemstones.
Later that night, when Hattie and Jess had gone home, and Tiff and Joyce had retired to bed, Lorna tossed and turned on the sofa, her body as uncomfortable as her conscience. Even Rudy gave up, slinking off the sofa to lie on his cushion. When the town hall clock outside chimed half past one – the ‘go to bed’ call, before the chimes ceased for the night – Lorna threw off the duvet and went into the kitchen to indulge in the one thing she knew would calm down her racing thoughts.
Not wine, or chocolate, but a colouring book.
Adult colouring books were Lorna’s guilty pleasure, a slightly tacky habit not even Tiffany knew about. Like squirty cream and plastic cheese, it was something she knew she shouldn’t like but did. A lot. The calming simplicity of following the lines was comforting, like the colour-by-numbers books her mum hated, where everything would turn out right, so long as she matched the paint with the numbers. Anyone could be creative then, even her.
Lorna opened the tea-towel drawer where she’d hidden the pick of the colouring books from the rack downstairs, and sat down with the jar of felt tips. Even arranging the shades in a rainbow cheered her up. She pulled out a cerise pen – cerise, the colour of discos and fizzy pop – and started to colour the Mona Lisa in more upbeat shades. She looked cheerier with a stripy shirt. And Debbie Harry blonde hair. She paused, then gave her some dark roots. Edgy.
She was taking such care to get the texture of the pen strokes even that she didn’t notice the kitchen door opening and a figure appearing in the shadow of the hall. It was only when the chair opposite squeaked on the floor tiles that she realised she wasn’t alone, and nearly jumped out of her skin.