Tempting Fate

by Jane Green

  They scan Trish first, checking out her clothes, her jewellery – she is famous for her sense of style – before their eyes alight on Elliott. Ah. This must be her partner. What kind of a man is it that Trish would choose?

  Sometimes he wishes he could pull Trish away from all this. Away from this house, this world, these places where she feels pressure to see and be seen, to dress and act and look the part.

  A cottage in the country would be perfect. Perhaps they could live somewhere remote by the ocean. A place where neither of them had to dress up, where they could wear shorts and flip-flops all summer, wrap up in fleece and down when the weather got cold.

  They could cook together over a big range in the kitchen, and their children – in the fantasy all the children would be there together, both hers and his – would run through the house squabbling, as he and Trish laughed about how wonderful it was to have this chaotic blended family.

  ‘How about we go to the country?’ he says to Trish on the way home after he has lied and said how much he liked her friends. ‘A friend of mine has a place in Vermont that he barely uses, and he loves friends going to stay. I thought perhaps you and I could go up there one weekend. Maybe take the kids.’

  ‘What kind of a place?’ Trish asks.

  ‘It’s wonderful.’ He remembers the times he and Gabby took the kids. ‘It’s a big, sprawling farmhouse. Not fancy, very basic, but comfortable. There are big squishy sofas and huge fireplaces, plus board games going back centuries. It’s on a large pond with a swimming deck, and it’s just the most peaceful place on earth. It’s really a place where you get back to your roots.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’d ever get my kids in a swimming pond,’ Trish says with a laugh. ‘I’m afraid they’re chlorine addicts. I took them to a hotel in Greece that had a salt-water pool and they were horrified.’

  ‘I can understand them not liking salt water in a pool, but this is a beautiful clear-water pond. They’d love it.’

  ‘With green slimy things underneath them?’ She looks at him doubtfully. ‘I’m not so sure.’

  Elliott remembers going one summer when Olivia and Alanna were much younger, and they spent hours throwing themselves off the swimming deck, shrieking with laughter.

  The four of them took the kayaks onto the lake, saying they were going on a bear hunt, whipping the girls into a frenzy of excitement and fear. Everything was quiet, when the air was suddenly filled with a deafening snap of branches and the girls shrieked with terror. It was probably, almost certainly, a deer, but to this day, whenever they talk about it, it was the day they got away from the bear.

  They have been to the farm a few times in winter. Before the girls were born Gabby used to enjoy skiing – her enthusiasm for it had been kindled by school trips to Austria and Switzerland, when she spent much of her time either mooning over the ski instructors or desperately trying to impress them.

  But at the farm Elliott would take the girls to the local ski mountain while Gabby stayed home and made huge pots of soup, stews, warming casseroles. One night she produced fondue, proudly drawing out the fondue pot she had discovered nestling in the back of the cobwebby pantry, and they sat by the fire skewering chunks of baguette and swirling them around the melted and very garlicky Gruyère and Emmental.

  The house is dusty and basic, lived-in and loved. It is a house that holds nothing but happy memories for Elliott, a house in which he wants to create new memories with Trish. A house in which, surely, Trish will be able to let down her guard and be her true, natural self.

  ‘When you say the word “basic”,’ Trish says slowly, ‘what does that mean?’

  He describes the house in more detail, trying to impart the magic of the property, the surrounding woods, the beauty.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She shakes her head. ‘If we’re going to do Vermont, I’m thinking Twin Farms.’

  ‘Twin Farms?’

  ‘Oh it’s fabulous!’ she says with a smile. ‘That’s what we’ll do! I’ll book Twin Farms for the weekend. It’s the most fantastic, quiet, beautiful, luxurious place in the world. You’ll go nuts! What a great idea!’ She draws out her iPhone to punch in a note to herself to have her assistant book Twin Farms, while Elliott stares stonily ahead.

  That is not what he had in mind at all.

  He can’t shake the feeling of things not being right. It isn’t that this relationship isn’t working – he is determined to make this work with Trish – but he is aware that he is being shoehorned into a life, a lifestyle, into which he doesn’t quite fit, and he isn’t sure what to do about it. The deeper into their relationship he goes, the stronger the feeling he has that he is trying to be something he is not.

  Elliott has never been a man who has been unsure of himself. He has always known exactly who he is, where he is going, and what he has wanted. Yet here he is, nearing fifty, for the first time in his life feeling uncomfortable in his skin. It is a new feeling, and not one he enjoys.

  Pulling into the driveway at Trish’s, he doesn’t make a move to get out of the car.

  ‘Are you coming?’ Her door already open, Trish is about to get out, pausing only when she sees Elliott is not moving.

  ‘You know,’ he says, ‘I realize I have a very early start tomorrow, and I need some equipment I’ve left at home. I think I’m going to go home now so I won’t have to stop off in the morning.’ He looks at her. ‘Is that okay?’

  ‘Of course,’ she replies brightly, and he thinks again how much he loves this aspect of her: that she is never jealous, nor insecure; that she never thinks his desire to go home means he doesn’t want to be with her.

  Even when that is the case.

  He doesn’t go home, though. He drives around town for a while, then down to the sea. He parks his car and sits on the low stone wall by the beach and looks out towards Long Island, where the lights from the lighthouse glitter on the black water. He wishes he smoked. Now would be a perfect time for a cigarette, but he has never indulged in that particular habit.

  Back in the car, he drives aimlessly, until he finds himself drawing up outside the house that was once his. He smiles at the only light left on, in Alanna’s room. She is too old to be scared of the dark, and allows her light to be turned off by her parents when they say goodnight, but always climbs out of bed when she knows they are safely in their bedroom to turn her light back on.

  The privet in front is overgrown and straggly. He is tempted to creep into the garage for the clippers and prune it right now, as a surprise, for it has always been his job, and Gabby has enough to do with the new baby.

  He doesn’t. He sits in his car, staring at his house, thinking of his old life, trying not to compare old and new, until there is nothing else to do but drive back to his new life.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Josephine and Gabby’s mother have become new best friends. Since Natasha has been here, Josephine has started coming over every day, dropping in to see how Gabby is doing, bringing something for the baby, carrying an extra pumpkin pie she made, but Gabby is convinced she’s only coming to sit at the kitchen table and chat to her mother.

  As a child, Gabby found her mother incomprehensible. As an adult, on Gabby’s home turf, Gabby finds her magical. With no one to distract her, nothing to disturb her, no stream of people walking through the front door – and Josephine could never qualify as a stream – Natasha is warm, loving, engaged. Gabby is terrified of what she will do when her mother leaves.

  The time seems to have flown by, and Gabby is grateful that her mum has been able to stay for so long, but she is talking of leaving at the end of the month, filling Gabby with dread. Being on her own and pregnant was one thing, but being on her own with a newborn baby is quite another entirely.

  She comes downstairs knowing Josephine is here, having heard her car pull up earlier, and walks into the kitchen to find Josephine and Natasha sipping big mugs of tea, Natasha in peals of laughter over a story Josephine is telling her.

  ‘Why
do I always feel like the gooseberry around you two?’ Gabby pulls a mug down from the cupboard, drops in a tea bag, then puts the kettle back on.

  ‘Gooseberry?’ Josephine looks at her.

  ‘Odd man out.’

  ‘That’s because your mother and I have fallen in love.’

  Gabby looks at Josephine in alarm. She is joking.

  If only you knew, thinks Gabby.

  ‘Josephine has an excellent idea. She wants you both to go on a girls’ night out tonight. Her boys are with their father, and Olivia and Alanna are out with friends this evening, so you have no excuse not to go. I think it’s exactly what you need.’

  ‘It’s not what I need,’ Gabby says. ‘It’s what Josephine needs. She’s been desperately trying to get me to go to some ghastly singles bar with her, and now you’re press-ganging me into going too. I know I said I’d go, but not yet. I’m not ready to go out in public yet.’

  ‘I think going out will do you good. You go nowhere,’ her mother says.

  ‘Nowhere,’ echoes Josephine. ‘You’re turning into a dusty old maid. Let’s go out and have fun! You look great, Gabby. Come on, let’s flirt!’

  Gabby peers at her. ‘Have you seen the men in those bars? Are you seriously suggesting we put our energies into flirting with those creepy professional singles?’

  ‘Yes!’ Josephine laughs. ‘Maybe tonight will be our lucky night and the two most gorgeous single men in Fairfield County will decide to be there. You’re coming, whether you like it or not.’ She suddenly sits up straight, turning her head to look out of the window. ‘Speaking of gorgeous men, a car just pulled up and someone extremely interesting is getting out. He’s coming here!’ She turns back to Gabby. ‘Please don’t tell me that’s your ex-husband or I may have to slap you.’

  Gabby cranes her neck to see Matt walking up the path.

  ‘Not ex-husband,’ she explains. ‘Father of my child.’

  ‘What? And he’s here? I thought he wasn’t going to have anything to do with Henry.’

  The bell rings.

  ‘It’s a long story.’ Gabby gets up to open the door. ‘Saved by the bell.’

  Josephine does not flirt with Matt, thankfully, but she cannot take her eyes off him. When he goes upstairs to get Henry from his nap, she leans forward and hisses, ‘How did I not know how adorable he is?’

  Gabby laughs. ‘Don’t look so surprised. I’m not that awful.’

  ‘No! That’s not what I mean, but I’m wondering why I’m dragging you out to hit the singles scene when you have the perfect man right here in your house. Why aren’t you up there with him? Why aren’t you seducing him right now?’

  ‘Because you and my mother are sitting round the kitchen table making my devious plan impossible?’ jokes Gabby.

  Josephine’s face falls. ‘Oh God. I’m sorry. I’ll go.’ She stands up before Gabby, laughing, tells her how ridiculous she is being.

  ‘I’m not interested in Matt.’

  Josephine frowns. ‘But he’s the father of your baby.’

  ‘Yes. And I was interested, obviously. But …’ She thinks. ‘It’s as if there was a light bulb inside me, which glowed for a while, and then, suddenly, it went out, and nothing will get the light to go back on.’

  Josephine is sceptical. ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Truly. Nothing. He’s adorable, and brilliant, and handsome, and funny, but he’s just not for me, and, beyond that, he’s a child. I don’t want to be mother to anyone except to my children. We had a … dalliance. It was utterly all-consuming, and it changed my life. I can’t say any longer that I wish it had never happened, because I have Henry, and he is amazing, but, as you know, it turned my life upside down in ways I didn’t want.’

  ‘Well,’ her mother says thoughtfully, ‘it may not have been what you wanted, but, as you pointed out, you have Henry, and you wouldn’t change that. I always think that we are exactly where we need to be. There is a greater plan for you, and Henry is part of that plan. Perhaps Matt needed to come into your life. Perhaps, as painful as it has been, you and Elliott needed to be apart.’

  Gabby says nothing. Her mother’s words sound so wise, except when they refer to her.

  ‘Meanwhile, I’m perfectly happy to babysit Henry. I imagine Matt will stay here too, to keep me company. You two go out and have fun.’

  Gabby rolls her eyes. The last thing she wants to be doing tonight is hitting a bar, but she checks her watch. ‘I give in.’ She turns to Josephine. ‘I have to drop the girls at their friends’ houses. Shall I pick you up at seven?’

  ‘Perfect,’ trills Josephine. ‘I’m going to run down to Main Street and get something to wear.’

  ‘I like him,’ Alanna announces, from the back seat of the car, while Olivia raises her eyebrows and glares out of the window. Gabby doesn’t ask to whom she’s referring.

  ‘Good,’ says Gabby. ‘He’s a nice man. What’s not to like?’

  ‘How about: he’s young enough to be your son, and he’s forcing himself into our family when he’s not wanted,’ mutters Olivia.

  ‘I want him,’ says Alanna.

  ‘Henry wants him,’ adds Gabby.

  ‘What about you?’ spits Olivia. ‘You definitely want him.’

  Gabby sighs. ‘Only as Henry’s father. I don’t want him for me. Listen, Olivia. I know this is hard, to have another man around who isn’t your father, but I promise you that if there was anything going on between us, or if I thought there might ever be anything going on between us, I’d tell you. I’m not going to keep any secrets from my family ever again. Whatever happened between us happened, and I can’t change that, but nothing’s ever going to happen between us again.’ She laughs. ‘Quite apart from the fact that there’s no chemistry whatsoever, Matt has a girlfriend.’

  ‘I bet she’s pretty,’ Alanna pipes up. ‘I mean, I know Matt’s old, but he’s very cute.’

  ‘I’m sure she is. She’s a model. And she has the coolest name: Monroe.’

  Olivia turns her head slowly towards her mother. ‘He’s going out with Monroe?’

  Gabby glances at her daughter. ‘Yes. Why? Do you know her?’

  ‘Monroe the model?’

  ‘Is there more than one?’

  ‘No! There’s only one Monroe. She’s gorgeous. She’s going out with him? Our brother’s father?’

  ‘Apparently so.’ Gabby keeps her eyes on the road as Olivia whips out her iPhone and starts Googling.

  ‘Oh. My. God. Mom! You didn’t tell us who he is!’

  ‘Who is he? Who is he?’ Alanna bounces up and down on the back seat, stretching through the gap between the front seats to try to see Olivia’s phone.

  ‘He’s, like, a gazillionaire. He invented Fourforesight and sold it for bajillions. And he dates Monroe! And he’s part of our family! Oh my God. I have to tell everyone!’ And she starts furiously texting.

  ‘Not so bad any more, is it?’ mutters Gabby, who can’t resist a small smile.

  Usually the girls climb out of the car and Gabby drives off without going into the house or seeing Elliott, or, heaven forbid, the dreaded Trish, although according to the girls Trish rarely comes to their dad’s house – ‘It’s far too small and poky for her,’ Olivia said – and if they do see her on their weekends with their dad, it’s either going to her house, where they tumble into the amazing basement to play ping-pong, air hockey, or watch movies on the giant TV, or going out to an event.

  This time they are stopping by to retrieve clothes. The girls are running out of things to wear, and Gabby has no idea what has happened to the rest of their clothes. They aren’t in the laundry, and unless the girls have lent them to friends – which they swear they haven’t – they must be at their father’s house.

  Up until Christmas she would have just called Elliott, but since then things have become strained. Gabby has found herself barely able to communicate with him, barely able to look him in the eye, since he embarked upon his relationship with Trish, a woman Gabby has n
ever liked. For a while she became obsessed with Googling Trish. She discovered everything about her, unable to tear her eyes away from her perfect white smile beaming at the camera. There was even one picture that popped up on a local website of Trish and Elliott together, taken at a charity gala. Elliott looked dapper and sophisticated in a way he never had when he was married to Gabby.

  Trish has always been a figure of envy and secret derision to Gabby, but in her mind Trish is now a full-blown monster. She wishes she didn’t feel like this and could let her hatred go, but every time she imagines Trish with Elliott she starts gnashing her teeth together in fury.

  So as they pull up outside the house and Gabby gets out of the car, she has to force a smile onto her face as if everything is fine, as if she isn’t consumed by hatred of her soon-to-be-ex-husband’s girlfriend, consumed by the overwhelming fear she has that she is not good enough, that Trish knows she’s not good enough, that Elliott knows it now too.

  The girls push open the front door. ‘Dad? We’re here!’ Gabby is somewhat gratified to hear them say ‘We’re here’ rather than ‘We’re home’, but she remains on the doorstep, waiting to be invited in by Elliott. ‘Dad?’ They walk through the silent house. ‘Dad?’

  Olivia turns to Gabby. ‘I don’t think he’s here.’

  Gabby is relieved. ‘Can you just run upstairs and get the clothes you think are from my house and bring them down?’

  ‘Mom!’ Olivia pouts. ‘I don’t know which is which. I keep telling you. You come up and take the stuff that’s yours.’

  Gabby frowns. She has never been inside this house, but, peering through the doorway, she has to admit she is curious. There is the old sofa from the family room, but she has never seen those cushions before. They’re stunning. Why didn’t she think of putting cushions like that on the sofa? It completely transforms it.

  She steps in gingerly, her eyes scanning the rooms as she walks through. I remember that rug, she thinks. Looked better in our house. And that painting! She looks up at the huge oil cityscape. Thank God that bloody painting’s finally out of my house, she thinks. I hate it even more here.