Marshmallows for Breakfast (43 page)

As I drove, all that motivated me, pushed me, was the thought of Summer's little face, grinning because she had a secret she was probably going to share, and Jaxon's big eyes as he explained to me what Garvo was doing.

My muscles ached, my eyes were dry and tight behind my driving glasses as I concentrated on the house in the distance. It was a yellowish-stone building with a slate roof and three windows at the top, and two large windows at the bottom. The light spilling out from the bottom windows glowed orange, drawing us closer. I slowed to double-check the white sign that stood on the edge of the property: Agateaen Field Cottage.

“This is it,” I said to Kyle, my excitement muted by my tiredness. I hadn't stopped the whole way. Nearly seven hours I'd been driving; the only real rests were the snarl-ups in traffic when we waited sometimes twenty minutes to get moving.

Kyle, who'd been wide awake, his head resting on the window, his eyes staring unblinkingly ahead, sat up. His
face, which had been mottled red and white from his crying, and his eyes, which had ballooned red and sore once he'd stopped crying, had both calmed down. He looked normal again. The nearness of his family had injected the spark of life into him again. I crawled the car up the wide gravel drive with green grass on either side, up towards another car sitting beside the entrance.

The front door swung open. Before I'd even had a chance to fully stop, Kyle had unlocked his seat belt, clicked open his door and he was out of the car. I slammed on the brakes, although I was nearly at a virtual stop.

Jaxon came running out first. And then Summer. Both in their nightclothes: Jaxon in his Superman pajamas, Summer in her Spider-Man knee-length T-shirt. Both had socks on.

“DAD!” They both screamed at the top of their voices. “DAD!”

Kyle threw himself onto his knees in the headlights of the car. Jaxon leapt on him first, flung his arm around his dad's neck. Then Summer, her arms linking around his neck. His arms looped around them. The kids were talking. Both of them gabbling, telling their father everything they'd done in the past few weeks. Everything, at once. I stared at them, my eyes running over every inch of them, checking. Double-checking. They were fine. They were fine and safe and happy.

The relief hit me like a fist driven into the deepest, softest part of my stomach. I folded forwards, holding my stomach over the epicenter of the relief. The sweet relief. It hurt and it made me feel good. It was OK. They really were OK. I hadn't felt this in a lifetime. Too many things hadn't turned out OK, too many things had gone the bad way. I hadn't been sure this wouldn't go the same way. My body started to heave, the tears I hadn't shed in all the time we were apart rushing up to the surface, fighting to be free, struggling to be released.

Rap-rap
on the window made my heart leap. Wiping at my misty eyes, I sat up. “KENDIE!” Jaxon shouted, his face grinning at me through the glass. “KENDIE!” Summer echoed.

Kyle pulled them back as I opened the door and then they were in my arms, their warm bodies pressed against me, the smell of their freshly washed skin filling my nostrils, their hair tickling my cheeks, their arms squeezing the life out of me.

“KendieKendieKendieKendieKendie,” they kept repeating. It was only my name, but it was the sweetest thing I'd ever heard.

Ashlyn was standing in front of the big, stone fireplace that had no fire in its belly. She looked as though she'd been pacing, her face a mask of anxiety, her green eyes wide and frightened as she stared at the door. She was thinner than she had been the last time I saw her, but she looked well. Far better than Kyle did. Far better than I did. There were a few dark wisps under her eyes, her hair was pulled back into a sloppy ponytail, her body dressed in unbelted blue jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt, big fluffy slippers on her feet. Four steps over the threshold was all Kyle got before Ashlyn threw herself at him.

She clutched the front of his T-shirt, buried her face in it, as though she might find comfort and absolution in the thick material covering his heart. Burst into noisy tears as she held onto her husband. Kyle's entire body stiffened the moment they made bodily contact and he stared over her head, towards the back of the cottage, towards the doorway that led into the huge kitchen- diner.

I had a twin's hand in each of my hands, small and perfectly formed, warm and beautiful. I had to remind myself
not to cling on too tight, had to remind myself letting go wouldn't result in them disappearing again. I guided them towards the cream sofa. Under the sofa lay a huge Oriental rug, its intricate pattern worn in places from the length of time it had been there. The cottage was cozy, homely. The kids must have loved it here. It was the perfect place to spend the school holidays, which is probably what they thought their time away had been. A holiday. Not a slow, winding road through every level of hell that Kyle and I had thought it was.

I sat in the middle of the sofa, and the kids sank down beside me, watching their mother and father. Kyle wasn't engaging with Ashlyn. He hadn't called the police, but that didn't mean he didn't hate her for what she'd done, for dropping him off at the gates of Hades without even a map to help him get to the other side.

Her sobs decreased as she began to talk. “I'm sorry,” she said tearfully into his chest. “I wanted to be with them. I missed them so much. I just wanted to be with them. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.” She kept repeating her sorries into his chest, until slowly, like an ice block in weak sunlight, he melted, relented. He stopped staring over her head, and shaking his head slightly, he looked down at his wife, gently raised his arms and folded them around her. “Shhh,” he hushed as he lowered his head to hers, started to stroke his hand over her hair, soothing her. “Shhh … We'll talk about it later. We'll talk about it later.” His comfort spread throughout the room, his hushing moving gently over all of us.

The kids and I watched them. The amount of affection between the two of them was palpable. Their bodies fit together, he knew how to offer her comfort, their hearts probably beat in time. How Kyle and Ashlyn fit together took me back briefly to the night Will and I spent together, lying on
the bed, our bodies so close it was impossible to believe we hadn't always been like that, hadn't always been so close we couldn't function without the other one. What I would do to be back with Will… To have the chance to hold him like that… These two had it. How come they were the only two people in the world who could not see that they were meant to be together?

Summer got up on her knees, put her hand on my cheek and twisted my head towards her. “Are Mumma and Dad friends again?” she asked eagerly. Her bright eyes smiled at me, waiting for me to say yes. I couldn't say it. Of course I couldn't say it. Jaxon got up on his knees as well, and I turned to look at him. The same eyes, waiting for the same answer.

I looked at Kyle and Ashlyn, became lost for a moment in the smooth beautiful lines their bodies made as they stood together—it was impossible to tell where she began and he ended.

I returned my attention to the kids. Looked at Jaxon, then rested my gaze back on Summer because she had asked the question. “I hope so,” I replied. It was the most honest answer I could give them. They may be friends, but not in the way Summer and Jaxon wanted. Because of their inability to talk to each other, to tell each other the truth, they'd probably never be friends like Summer and Jaxon wanted.

CHAPTER 41

I
lay on the sofa under the spare duvet with its white and blue cornflower cover, propped up by three soft, squashy pillows, wide awake in the darkness. I hated the darkness. Darkness was suffocating. When my eyes couldn't focus on a shape, couldn't anchor myself to a point, I feared I'd drown in darkness.

It's dark, an endless pitch. The weight crushes my body. Blackness is creeping in at the sides of my sight as the hand around my throat takes away the air and consciousness. I try to fight it. Try to stop it. But the blackness is still coming. “You're special,” the voice whispers. “Stop fighting you're special. Stop fighting and I won't kill you.”

I sat bolt upright.
No. Not now. I'm not going there now,
I decided. If I did something else it would stop. If I moved, it wouldn't keep a hold. I threw back the covers, got off the sofa. I picked up the small fleece blanket that was draped over the back of sofa. I needed to get outside, to the air. I could breathe out there. Theoretically it was probably safer inside the house than outside, but I knew that danger didn't always come from the outside, from strangers.

If I thought about it rationally, the biggest danger to me was in this house. And she was called Ashlyn. The way she
had looked at me earlier … She'd speared me to the spot with her glacial green eyes and had tried to remove me from her life with all the hatred she felt for me focused into one look.

It was nothing personal, I knew that. Ashlyn hated my presence in her life, my role in her family's life.
Why don't you just disappear?
her look had asked me. Her body language, the slight push with which she'd given me the duvet and pillows, had added:
Why don t you just get out of our lives for good?

Yes, in the whole of Cornwall she was the most clear and present danger to me. I crept through the kitchen to the patio doors. I eased open the locks and then softly pulled the doors open before I stepped out into the night. Outside was chilly. The end of August meant cold nights, a bite that brushed over the skin, causing goose bumps to clamber upright and the body to curl a little into itself. I crept over the lawn to the twin swings that stood outside in the large back garden.

From the flaking green paint and rust, it was obvious it had been here for a few years. Maybe that was why Ashlyn had rented it: she saw the double swings, it was only a twenty- minute walk from the seafront, it was perfect for the kids.

I sat on the green swing and, thankfully, despite its age, it didn't creak. Didn't alert anyone in the house that I was awake and walking around. I moved the swing gently back and forth, trailing the tips of my trainers in the cork on the ground beneath the swings.

I closed my eyes, remembering the look on Jaxon's face when he'd come running out the front door. The unsup-pressed delight that came over him as he ran to his dad. I felt the smile take over my face. The smile became a grin as I remembered Summer circling her arms around my neck. A lump formed in my throat. A lump from remembering how
desolate my life had been without them. The thought of living without them … The panic rose quickly, fluttering to my throat, forming a lump that I couldn't swallow away. A lump that I could only cry away. I felt the tears coming up behind my eyes. How could I live without them? I needed Summer's constant chatter, Jaxon's oblique observations. I needed the children. At one point I thought they needed me. And maybe they did. But that was only while their mother was gone. Now she was back. I almost doubled over at this new torture. Now she was back she'd take back what was rightfully hers. Yes, they'd probably want to see me still. But as a friend. Not as the person they came to with a homework problem, not as the woman they drove crazy with their questions, not as their “other mumma.”

I didn't look up when I heard the door open and someone step quietly out of the house. I knew who it was. The only person it could be.

Ashlyn sat down beside me on the swing. A brief glance from the corner of my eye revealed she was dressed as un-sensibly as I was. She had on her calf-length satin nightdress, the T-shirt Kyle had been wearing and a pair of thick, royal blue socks pulled up as far as they would go. I could smell Kyle from her. Sandalwood and citrus, his vaguely sweet masculine scent. That was probably how I smelled— of the man I'd spent nearly six weeks living with. I hoped she smelled of him because they'd got back together. That they'd talked themselves out and made love. It'd be disastrous for me and my relationship with the kids, but it was what this family needed. They needed to be put back together again.

She swung out of time with me, the chains on our individual swings rasping like quietly expiring asthmatics with each movement back and forward. Back and forth we went, moving in uneven time, sounding out an unsynchronised
symphony. I wasn't sure if she was expecting me to speak first, but I had nothing to say to her. I wanted their family knitted back together, I wanted them sewn back into a happy patchwork but I was angry. My anger was raging like an undammed river below the surface. I could reach out and claw out a handful of her hair and slap her from left to right, right to left and not break a sweat. I could hurt Ashlyn for the hell she'd put Kyle and me through. I had nothing to say to her. And there was nothing she could say that would make me speak to her.