After the Honeymoon (45 page)

‘How long do you think you’re going to be stopping with me?’ asked Mum one Saturday afternoon. They were sitting in a cafe on the high street, Emma watching all the couples going by with their pushchairs and baby slings. It wasn’t until now that she realised how much she’d taken that family-ness for granted. Saturdays were the worst. She felt so lost without her nearest and dearest around her. The growing lump seemed like an imposition. At times, she hated it. At others, she felt desperately sorry for it.

‘I’m not really sure,’ said Emma, stirring her latte and watching the brown sugar lump dissolve in circles. Unlike the others, this baby had given her a sweet tooth. ‘I’m sorry if we’re in the way.’

Her mother rifled through her bag for her lighter. That was another thing: Mum had started smoking again, and even though Emma had dropped heavy hints about it not being good for the kids, she carried on doing it. Still, it was her house.

‘I just don’t feel ready to be on my own yet,’ added Emma quietly. ‘I’m sorry, but—’

‘Hello.’ They both looked up at the sound of a once-familiar voice. Emma’s heart took off at a hundred to the dozen as she absorbed the man with thin silver hair, slight stoop and pale blue eyes.
Dad!

Frantically, she looked at her mother, who was sitting very still with two small red spots on her cheeks. ‘Ted,’ she said in a thin voice. Then her eyes darted to his side. Thank heavens, Emma thought, that he wasn’t with Trisha.

‘Bit of a coincidence, this.’ Dad looked as though he would like to pull up a chair. ‘I don’t usually come here. How are you, Shirley?’

The red spots on Mum’s cheeks grew brighter. ‘OK. Yourself?’

He nodded. ‘Very well, thanks.’ He glanced at Emma. ‘Having a break from the kids, are you? Some mum and daughter time?’

The envy in his tone was almost palpable. Emma nodded, shooting Mum a look to say
Don’t tell him about Tom and me
. Thankfully, she seemed to get the message.

‘I’ll be off then.’ Her father was smiling hard in the way that people do when they don’t want to show their pain. A few weeks ago, she wouldn’t have cared, but something tugged now in her chest. Then he held out his hand to Emma, giving it a quick squeeze. ‘Give me a ring sometime, love. I’d really like to see the children one day. I’d like to give them some Christmas presents too.’

There was a grunt from Mum’s side of the table. ‘That would be a first.’

Dad was nodding. ‘Yes. There are things that we all should have done earlier, aren’t there, Shirley? Or maybe not done at all. Still, as they say, it’s never too late.’

Then he was gone, swallowed up in the crowd of early-December shoppers. Emma continued to stir her coffee even though it was cold; more to give herself something to do while she braced herself for the question that had to be asked. ‘What did Dad mean about doing things earlier or not at all, Mum?’

Her mother’s hand was shaking on her bag clasp. ‘How am I meant to know? Maybe he was talking about going off with that tart.’

‘Or do you think he meant Keith?’

The words were out of her mouth before she could take them back, but the effect on her mother’s face was instant. ‘What are you talking about? Keith who?’

Emma felt herself shaking. ‘Wasn’t he a neighbour?’

‘So?’ Mum was staring at her stonily. Too late, Emma realised she’d made a dreadful mistake. Dad had lied about his mistress, hadn’t he? He’d probably lied about Keith too.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It was just something that Dad said when I went to see him.’

Her mother’s face set. ‘You went to see your father?’

I have every right, Emma wanted to say, but the pain on her mother’s face instantly made her guilty. ‘I’m sorry, Mum. He sent me a wedding card and I felt I owed him.’

Mum got up, wrapping her coat round her. ‘You don’t owe him anything. Trust me. Now let’s get out of this place. I need to buy some more fags.’

The run-up to Christmas was getting hectic. Gawain and Willow had both made their lists for Santa, sitting on Granny’s sofa in front of the quiz programme that she was addicted to.

‘Daddy says we can do another list with him on Saturday,’ announced Gawain brightly. ‘He says Santa is going to come twice this year.’

Their son had stopped asking when they were going back home now. Instead, both children seemed to have accepted that they saw Daddy all day on Saturday instead. How adaptable they were at this age! Far more so than adults.

Meanwhile, she ached for Tom. Yearned for his arms at night. Missed the familiarity of not having to say something, because they were comfortable with each other’s silences. As for his irritating habits, like leaving clothes on the floor or lights on, they seemed like trivialities in comparison with not having him at all.

‘He won’t listen to my Phil,’ said Bernie one day at work. ‘Put those roast spuds out of reach, please. I don’t want to be tempted. Phil’s tried telling your Tom that you didn’t know what you were doing but he won’t listen.’

Emma turned away. Since Tom had thrown her out, she’d still refused to talk to her ‘friend’ apart from the odd phrase that had to be said at work like ‘More beans, please’.

‘Mrs Walker, Mrs Walker!’ A little girl with plaits came rushing up to her indignantly. ‘Sam won’t talk to me cos he says I kicked him under the table, but I didn’t. It was an ax idn’t.’

Bernie gave her a look over the kitchen counter as if to say, See? We ought to teach kids to make up: set an example.

If she thought she was falling for that one, she was mistaken. In the meantime, Emma had carried on working extra hours at the after-school club to give Mum some money towards their living expenses. Despite being tired (‘This baby of yours is a big one!’ the midwife had declared at her last antenatal), she still loved it – especially when one of the kids asked her to help with homework.

‘You’re good at this,’ said one of the other helpers approvingly when she’d been helping a little boy with his reading. ‘Just like a proper teacher.’

Hah! In her dreams …

Every now and then at work, Emma would see Melissa coming in to pick up Alice and Freddie. Since they’d sorted out that horrid misunderstanding over the journalist, she’d been very sweet to her. ‘How are you doing?’ asked Melissa one evening, glancing at her stomach.

She busied herself with tidying up crayons, hoping Melissa wouldn’t ask about Tom.

‘Fine, thanks.’

‘Your husband must be very proud.’

Emma started to nod and say that yes, he couldn’t wait to have a third. But instead, she found tears filling her eyes. ‘Actually, we’re having a bit of a break.’

‘No!’

Now it was the other woman’s turn to look moist-eyed. ‘So are
we
, at the moment.’ She glanced around. ‘Winston’s gone back to London. But don’t mention it to anyone, will you?’

Emma shook her head vigorously. ‘Of course not. I’m so sorry. Do you think it will be, you know, permanent?’

Melissa shrugged. She looked thinner, Emma noticed. It didn’t really suit her. ‘I don’t know. What about you?’

Emma’s mouth went dry. ‘I don’t know either. He won’t talk to me.’

‘Tell you what.’ Melissa touched her arm in that pally way she used to do in Greece. ‘Why don’t I give you a make-up lesson as a bit of a treat, to cheer you up. No, I insist. Come round to my place one day next week.’

When Tom brought the children back after his next visit, he handed her a piece of paper with Gawain’s loopy childish handwriting.

‘It’s their list for Santa,’ he said briefly as they flew through the front door with Gawain yelling, ‘Granny, we’re back!’

Emma had glanced at it. There were the usual impossible expectations like a swing and one of those motorised model planes that were far too expensive. And then, right at the bottom, were the words I WANT MY DADDY.

The lump in her throat was so big that she could hardly breathe.

‘Maybe,’ said Tom quietly, studiously avoiding her swollen stomach, ‘we ought to have Christmas dinner together. For the kids’ sake.’

‘Maybe this is your chance to get Tom back,’ suggested Melissa brightly when she gave Emma that promised make-up lesson just before Christmas.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Emma doubtfully, looking round Melissa’s stunning bedroom with its lemon walls and pictures of the children on the dressing table, along with one of her ex-husband (whom she’d seen fleetingly at school) but none, surprisingly, of Winston. ‘I did something, you see, that he can’t forgive.’

Melissa traced a thin grey-green line underneath her left eye and then her right. It made her look rather striking, even though Emma would never have thought of using that colour herself. ‘You’d be surprised what you can forgive when there are children at stake,’ she said quietly.

Emma glanced at her friend’s closed expression in the mirror, which also reflected the huge bed behind, with a lovely rose-patterned chintzy ottoman at the end of it, and the chest of drawers with a pot of fat blue hyacinths on top. Did that mean she was ready to forgive Winston? Or her
first
husband? It was hard to tell and Emma didn’t feel able to ask.

‘Thank you so much,’ she said when Melissa had finished and a new Emma stared out from the mirror.

‘Think you can remember how to do it?’

Emma nodded. ‘I’ll try.’

‘I’ll write down some instructions to help.’ Melissa gave her a little kiss on the cheek. ‘Good luck.’

Emma flushed. ‘You too.’

On Christmas morning, Emma spent ages getting ready. ‘Bloody hell, what have you done to your face?’ demanded Mum when she finally emerged from the bathroom. ‘Don’t rub it off, love. It’s quite nice. Just that it takes some getting used to.’

Tom’s expression, when he let them in, showed that he was surprised by the new-look Emma with her glossy lips and curled eyelashes, even though he didn’t say anything. Meanwhile, the house itself looked as though it had had a makeover. So tidy and clean! Almost as though someone had been round to sort it out.

Tom? Or a new girlfriend? ‘Men don’t hang around long,’ Mum had warned. ‘If you want to get him back, you’ll need to act sharpish.’

Gawain, who’d shot upstairs to his old room, wouldn’t stop jumping on his bed. ‘It’s bouncier than my one at Granny’s,’ he called out.

Her mother, whom they’d had to ask too, of course, rolled her eyes. ‘Then you’re welcome to come back to this one, pet. Give me some peace again.’

‘Do you need a fag, Gran?’ Gawain called.

‘Not inside if you don’t mind,’ said Tom, heading for the back door. ‘I need us all to go outside together. Em, cover Willow’s eyes. I’ll do the same with Gawain.’

Em? He hadn’t called her that since that awful night when Phil had spilled the beans. Her heart leaped with hope. Then the five of them, including Mum, who was muttering something about smoking and human rights, went down the little side path into the garden.

‘A swing!’ gasped Gawain. ‘A real swing!’

Racing across, he leaped on it. Next to it, on the bright blue plastic frame, was a toddler-sized bucket seat. Willow wriggled out of Emma’s grasp, squealing with delight.

‘That must have cost a pretty packet,’ said Mum sharply.

Tom shrugged. ‘I’ve been doing overtime.’

For a bit they stood there, watching the children. An onlooker might have mistaken them for an ordinary family, thought Emma wistfully. Was it too late? Judging from Tom’s coolness towards her, the answer was yes, despite her earlier optimism.

Eventually, they went back into the house. ‘I need a double whisky to warm myself up,’ Mum grumbled. ‘Don’t be so stingy with that bottle, Tom. Give it to me.’

By the time it came to the turkey, Mum was well and truly sozzled. ‘Not for me, thanks,’ said Emma, putting her hand over the glass when Tom offered her some wine.

He shot the bump a distrustful glance. ‘Of course. Can’t let anything upset your baby.’

Emma bit her lip. ‘It’s not just because I’m pregnant. I’ve decided never to drink again. Alcohol made me do things I regretted.’

He hesitated. ‘I’ve done things I regretted too, like telling the paper about Winston King. But there are some sins that are beyond forgiveness.’

Wait, she was about to say but was interrupted by the sound of the doorbell ringing. ‘Santa!’ screamed Gawain who was now really hyper. ‘Maybe he’s coming a
third
time!’

Willow was clapping her hands as Tom, who had gone to investigate, came back with a pile of presents, each with a neatly written gift tag. ‘They were left on the doorstep,’ he said suspiciously, giving Emma a distrustful look. Then he added in a whisper. ‘From your fancy man, are they?’

She turned over the label on top and took a sharp breath.

To Willow, with love from Grandad.

‘They’re from Dad,’ she said, embarrassed.

Mum, her face flushed from a combination of whisky and wine, gave a short laugh from the sofa where she’d been dozing. ‘Thinks he can make up for lost time, does he?’

Gawain frowned. ‘How does time get lost, Daddy?’

‘Good question.’ Tom jerked his head in Mum’s direction. ‘Maybe you’d better get her upstairs, Em, and let her sleep it off.’

He was right. Mum was well and truly out of it now, mumbling incoherently as Emma led her into the bedroom she had once shared with Tom. Everything was the same, she noticed with a pang. The yellow rose bedspread. Her dressing table. The clothes that she’d left behind in the wardrobe. It was almost as though she’d never gone.

‘I’m sorry,’ slurred Mum as Emma pulled back the sheets.

‘It’s fine. We all have too much to drink sometimes.’

‘No. I’m sorry about Keith.’

Emma’s heart thudded. ‘What do you mean?’

‘If I hadn’t gone with Keith, your dad wouldn’t have gone off. I didn’t love him, you know. He was just there.’

Then she was out, fast asleep, snoring with her mouth open. So Dad had been right! Mum
had
had an affair first. Scarcely able to believe it, Emma stumbled her way downstairs. Tom had put on a DVD and both Gawain and Willow were sitting in front of it, mesmerised.

‘I’m going out now.’ Tom rose to his feet awkwardly.

Emma felt a stab of alarm. ‘Where?’ she asked, knowing at the same time that it was none of her business.