This weekend wasn’t turning out as planned.
He still hadn’t had a chance to tell Claire he’d signed up for the Ironman—and by “chance,” he meant “spotted an opportunity to tell her when he knew she wouldn’t get angry.” The longer he left it, the more of a deal it would be.
And the swimming pool that morning had been a disappointment.
He’d been expecting a place he could do length training. The brochure said there were ten different pools here, but that was stretching the truth. There were lots of mini pools, but they were landing pools for slides, or whirlpool baths, or lazy rivers where you had no chance of getting any crawl momentum up before crashing into an overweight woman wedged into a rubber tire, loaded with jewelry and floating around with her eyes shut, like she had all day.
The main pool was even worse.
The only bit of pool you could actually swim in was tiny and irregularly sized, with edges too erratic to do tumble turns. It was designed to look like a jungle pool, in this place where creating a fake-jungle aesthetic was apparently more important than enabling guests to attempt their personal bests.
Even worse, it had a horn-signaled wave machine every fifteen minutes—which wouldn’t have been too bad in itself, offering a little variety and extra resistance to Patrick’s swim, if it hadn’t meant hordes of people thundering into the pool, thrusting aloft toddlers in armbands.
Patrick changed gears.
This weekend wasn’t what he’d been hoping for at all.
26
They bought what they needed at the supermarket, and Alex pretended to be asleep again on the car journey back.
Patrick clearly had a different view of how Matt and Claire’s relationship had ended than she did. That’s why he wasn’t going there in conversation. Maybe Claire had told him a different story?
Because that kind of thing happened.
Alex wasn’t judging Claire. It was natural and everyone did it, et cetera, and this was the twenty-first century and people should make the choices that felt right for them, et cetera, and there was no absolute right or wrong in how people ran their relationships, et cetera, and who was she to judge?
Alex could keep going all day, if necessary, with the other caveats and et ceteras that she actually, genuinely believed in. And that would all be very well.
Assuming it was Claire who’d lied. Not Matt.
Because Matt had definitely told Alex he was the one who’d left Claire, not the other way round. That was one of the many things she’d learned on that third date, in the cinema.
She’d learned that Matt was a half-salt, half-sweet man, and that he often missed his mouth with the popcorn when he was concentrating, leaving a semicircle of kernels in the carpet round his seat.
She’d learned that, in his words, Matt “didn’t do” subtitles.
She’d learned that he had a love-hate relationship with 3D because “it’s just too fucking real”: that he was extremely flinchy, and jerked his head backward at the most predictable of shocks.
She’d learned that he didn’t always do up his shoelaces “because he was only going to have to undo them again at some point anyway.”
She’d learned that Matt liked to sit on the end of an aisle, because he always bought the largest drink they sold in the cinema.
And she’d learned that Matt had ended his marriage to Claire. That was her lasting take-away from the evening.
Alex learned that “it wasn’t working out” and Matt had “realized what needed to be done, however sad.” That “it was better for Scarlett if she didn’t have her parents fighting” and “no kid should grow up in a house where their parents don’t love each other anymore.”
But Alex was, now, starting to wonder if—actually—it was Claire who had left Matt.
And he might not have lied, of course. It still might have been Claire who’d lied to Patrick, or it may have felt like a mutual decision: they might have both felt the cracks forming and it just happened that Matt was the one who confronted the conflict head-on and took the bull by the horns and ended it.
Which would be fine: which would be reassuring. Which would be an interpretation of the facts that Alex could deal with—with one caveat.
It would have been fine, assuming Matt had ever shown in their relationship, just once, that he was the kind of person to anticipate change and confront conflict and take the bull by the horns.
Just once.
There were some absolute truths in Alex’s life that she couldn’t ignore.
She felt Patrick glance at her, but she kept her face neutral. Patrick looked back to the road ahead.
If Matt had lied to her, it could only be an ego thing. Matt trying to present himself as an unreturned, aspirational product of a man: a product still kept at full price and in the original packaging.
If it was that, she got it. But that didn’t make it OK.
Alex knew she could never have a relationship like her parents’: a relationship in which every item of clothing her mum bought was described as “a steal, reduced to a fiver in the sale.” A relationship in which her dad still smoked thirty years after giving up, but only once a week, when her mum was at her evening pottery classes.
Alex watched Patrick change gears.
She took a breath. “Don’t you think it’s a strange thing for us to be doing? This trip?”
Patrick shrugged.
“But don’t you?”
“Ask your boyfriend.”
“Yes, but you know Matt—he’ll go along with anything. It was Claire’s suggestion.”
Patrick drove under the hedgehog sign into the holiday park. “It was Matt’s idea.”
“It wasn’t.”
Patrick glanced at Alex, then back at the road. “Claire definitely told me it was Matt’s idea.”
Alex gripped the edge of the passenger seat. They rounded the corner toward their lodge.
“Shit!”
At Patrick’s shout, Alex lurched upright.
Patrick jerked his foot onto the brakes; the tires screeched.
Alex felt the unmistakable bump of an impact as the car shuddered to a stop.
Post-shooting interview. Nicola Trevor, 43.
Happy Forest guest.
Face-to-face. Happy Forest lodge.
Do you know any more? Is he doing OK?
Stable is good. Though Sheila at the entrance hut told me that already. She’s been coming to see me with updates, which is thoughtful.
Awful, awful. And I feel bad we’re still here, trying to enjoy ourselves, but we’re paid up till Boxing Day and it’s not like there’s anything we can do, is there?
The girls won’t be able to tell you anything. And Emily, the younger one, is terrified of the police after a pair of them came to her school to scare the kids about the long arm of the law.
Sophia did go to a burlesque class yesterday, yes. And when I heard the receptionist saying there had been an incident and no one would be there to pick up Scarlett, I took Scarlett back to our lodge to wait for her grandparents. They only picked her up half an hour ago.
Scarlett seemed fine. Why are you asking all this anyway?
But what a silly thing to think! It was an accident.
Is that why you’re here? But that’s awful! Of course it was an accident.
I did see some tension in that lodge, but it was only because Alex was drunk and kept saying pointed things. There was no harm done, and I’m sure she was fine in the morning.
It was just the drink talking. I don’t know her, but I’m sure that was it.
I’d never met any of them before the trip. Well, except Patrick, but I hadn’t seen him for twenty years!
Sheila said what?
But—that’s not true.
He must have recognized me
before, maybe. Maybe when we were queuing to get our keys. But—
No, he didn’t say. I swear he didn’t recognize me till the business with the pheasant.
I’m not sure how I feel about what you’re telling me.
Is this why Sheila keeps coming round to see me?
27
“It was just there, in the middle of the road!” Patrick whirled round to look out of the back window. “Looking at me, not moving—just standing there, waiting to be hit!”
Alex followed him out of the car, both leaving their doors open.
Patrick ran his hands over his scalp. He held his hands behind his head and stared forward, like a footballer who’d missed a penalty.
“The stupid, stupid thing,” Patrick said.
Alex looked at the pheasant. It lay in the middle of the road, on its back. It was stretched out, looking more relaxed than it should in the circumstances. In a tiny movement, its long, reedlike tail flapped gently against the tarmac. Its eyes were open.
Patrick rubbed his eyebrow in agitation. “Do we move it to the side of the road?”
“It’s alive. And it’s suffering,” Alex said.
Patrick pulled the sleeves of his sweatshirt over his hands.
Alex looked at Patrick—at his puffed-up chest, at the outrage and bravado and fear, and a pumping concoction of she-didn’t-know-what-else in there. At the stretched sleeves. “Are you going to do anything?”
But Patrick didn’t move.
The pheasant’s tail gave another soft flap.
Come on, Patrick.
But Patrick still didn’t move.
Alex couldn’t just leave it there, in that condition, while Patrick made up his mind. It wasn’t fair to the animal.
She knelt gently by the unmoving pheasant, ignoring the dampness of the tarmac.
“Hi,” she said softly to the pheasant. Its tail flapped minutely.
Alex reached forward. She curled her hands round the pheasant’s neck and felt the moist softness of the feathers in her palms.
She hesitated for a second then gripped the neck. She wrenched her hands in opposite directions.
Alex heard the crack and felt the velvety neck break between her hands.
Alex let the bird go. Gently, she laid it on the tarmac. She sat back on her heels, looking at the dead bird. A tiredness washed over her.
Behind Alex, a scream rang out.
Alex whipped her head round to look.
The family from the lodge next door with the red Corsa were all out in the front garden: the grandma, the mum, and the two kids. All looking at Alex. At Alex, with the dead pheasant in front of her.
But the scream hadn’t come from that angle.
Alex looked further round.
Claire and Matt stood with Scarlett on the doorstep of their own lodge. Claire had one hand over Scarlett’s eyes, and was trying and failing to bustle Scarlett inside.
“She murdered that bird!”
Alex ran toward Scarlett. “That’s not what happened!”
“She’s a murderer!”
“No! I can explain, Scarlett! It was the right thing to do. The pheasant had to die!”
Scarlett screamed again. “Posey!” She thrashed wildly with her arms. “Run away, as fast as you can! Save yourself!”
With a look of apology to Alex, Claire wrestled Scarlett through the front door. I’ll sort it, Claire mouthed.
Alex walked toward Matt; they stared at each other. Alex looked down at the dead pheasant.
Alex brushed the dirt from the knees of her jeans.
Patrick cleared his throat. “Well. Thanks for that.” He glanced up at the family in the next lodge and back to Alex.
“Yeah,” Alex said.
Matt put his hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Well done. I’m proud of you.”
Alex didn’t answer. She walked into the house, leaving the pheasant in the road.
She walked straight past the lounge, toward her bedroom. She shut the door, but she could still hear Scarlett’s juddering sobs from the bedroom upstairs.
Alex sank onto the bed.
She’d never wanted a drink more in her life.
28
Patrick stood in the road, looking at the dead bird. It looked so small and harmless.
He’d hit that bird and then stood there, just stood there, and let Alex finish it off.
“What do we do with the body?” Matt said.
Patrick still had Scarlett’s cries of murderer in his head. “Don’t call it a body.”
His only consolation was that it wasn’t him that Scarlett saw wringing the pheasant’s neck. That would have made the next few weeks a nightmare.
It was too late to change the past, but the experience left him feeling unmanned. Outmanned. Like he needed to wring a bird’s neck too, to balance the world again.
And now Nicola Garcia—lovely Nicola Garcia—was walking toward him, her hands jammed in the pockets of her jeans, an expression of polite sympathy on her face.
This wasn’t how he wanted to see her again. Not that he had planned a particular meeting, but it definitely was one where he made an impressive entrance, not one where he’d just accidentally maimed an animal and then stood by and let the nearest woman finish it off.
“Are you OK?” Nicola looked from Patrick to Matt. “I wanted to tell you, I was standing at the window and it just ran straight out.” She looked back to Patrick. “You had no chance of stopping.”
“Pheasants.” Matt gave her a smile. “They’ve got no brains at all, they’re just vegetables with wings.” He turned to Patrick. “What do you think? Shall we take this back for the pot? Claire will know how to pluck it from her days on the farm.”
Patrick thought of Scarlett. “Better not.” He turned toward Nicola, trying to think what to say.
He put his hands in his pockets, mirroring Nicola’s stance. He rocked forward onto the balls of his feet and back again.
No words would come.
Over her jeans, Nicola wore a long fluffy waistcoat-thing that stopped mid-thigh: it bulked her up, putting Patrick in mind of a matronly farmer’s wife. It’s funny, Patrick thought. If I hadn’t known she was the most beautiful thing who’d ever walked the earth, I almost wouldn’t know it from looking at her.
“I’m Matt,” Matt said. “I hope your kids aren’t too upset about seeing that.”
Nicola smiled. “Nicola. And they seem fine, which is a bit worrying. So God knows what they see at school.”
“I would have killed it myself,” Patrick said, “but Alex reacted so quickly.”
He paused. He’d regretted what he’d done, getting the lodge next door to Nicola, but now she was here right in front of him and—
“I’m Patrick. Patrick—Asher.” Too late. He’d done it.
Nicola smiled with a friendly acknowledgment.
Patrick looked down. He scuffed one shoe against the other.
He glanced at Matt. He didn’t want Matt there, but Patrick knew he wouldn’t get a better chance.
Patrick screwed up his eyes as if peering at Nicola. “Nicola…Garcia, isn’t it?”
Nicola tipped her head to one side and studied him. Her face wasn’t unfriendly. “I’m sorry, but—”
“Patrick Asher.” He didn’t need to hear how she didn’t remember him. “St. Swithin’s Comprehensive? GCSE Drama?”
Nicola’s brow shifted; her expression opened up. “Wow!” She gave a genuine laugh. “I can’t believe you recognized me! I’m Nicola Trevor now, nobody’s called me Garcia in years.”
“You look just the same.”
She batted his arm with the back of her hand. “I do not.”
“She does.” Patrick turned to Matt. “Though we barely saw her at school. She kept getting sent home for the length of
her skirt.”
“Too short or too long?” Matt asked with a grin.
Nicola grinned back. “Depended on the day. Railing against the system every which way. Girl power.” She shook her head with a smile. “I’m a mum now, of course.”
“Me too.”
Matt laughed at that.
“You know what I mean,” Patrick added.
“St. Swithin’s Comp. Well, well.” Nicola’s voice was lower than he remembered, crinkled by cigarettes and time. There was a joy implicit in her laugh that had never been there at fifteen. “Time flies. Those are my two girls you saw. Sophia and Emily. Eleven and nine.”
“I’ve got a girl and a boy, fourteen and thirteen. Amber and Jack. Though they aren’t here, they’re with their mother. I’m here with my partner’s family.” He glanced at Matt. “Not him, I’m not with him. My girlfriend’s family.”
Nicola shook her head. “Please don’t tell me how long it’s been since St. Swithin’s.” She stood back, as if taking Patrick in. Patrick stood up a little straighter. “How lovely to see you! There’s something about seeing old friends, isn’t there?”
Patrick grinned back. Friends.
Patrick realized Matt was still there, grinning away with them. “Small world.”
Nicola turned to Matt. “Do you know about his star turn in Hamlet?”
Patrick smiled boyishly. Nicola had remembered something about him. (Admittedly, she hadn’t remembered much—he didn’t have a real part, he was just a random mute courtier at the back of the stage. But she’d remembered he was in the play and that’s what mattered.)
“Did he have hair at school?” Matt said to Nicola. “Or was he always a slap-head?”
Nicola smiled. “He had hair. Lots of hair.”
Matt nodded. “You should come over with the family, Nicola. Fill us in on all the Patrick childhood goss. I think he’s got a free slot on his clipboard if you fancy a drink with us tomorrow night?”
Patrick tensed, on so many levels.
Nicola nodded. “We’d like that.”
The Adults Page 12