She sniffed, and nodded, balling her hanky up and shoving it in her pocket. ‘That would be lovely.’ She paused, frowned. ‘I better check with Philip.’
‘Why?’ asked Adrian. ‘You’re a grown woman. Harry and Amelia are old enough to look after themselves. What’s the problem?’
She thought about it for a moment, then nodded.
‘You’re right,’ she replied, and followed him to his beaten-up old Mitsubishi Warrior. He took Spike’s child seat out of the front to make room for her. Once she was inside, he couldn’t believe he had captured her. The smell of her scent filled the cab, overpowering the roll-up butts in the ashtray (though he never smoked when Spike was in the car) and the open packet of Cheesy Wotsits on the dash.
‘What are you wearing?’ he asked, and she looked at him a little askance. ‘I mean your perfume ...’
She laughed. ‘Coco. By Chanel.’
‘Coco ...’ he murmured. A few days later, when he got back home, he went into Bath, to House of Fraser, and begged a sample off the woman at the Chanel counter. He wondered if it was really pervy, to breathe in the essence of Serena before he went to bed at night. He found it comforting.
They hooked the boat trailer to the back of the truck, then drove to a slipway on the estuary where they could launch it easily, just the two of them. Adrian loved the boat - it was so light and so powerful, gliding across the water. He opened the throttle and they flew over the waves. It was immensely exhilarating and, Adrian knew, dangerous - they only had to hit a wave at the wrong angle and the boat would flip - but he was a good judge of what he was doing. Besides, he wanted adrenalin. He wanted something to cover up the real reason his heart was racing.
He pulled the boat onto a tiny beach along the coast where the family often came for picnics. They clambered out, falling onto the sand, laughing. And then they stopped laughing and looked at each other.
‘Shit,’ said Adrian.
‘Oh,’ said Serena, surprised.
They hadn’t looked back since. They had tried to resist it, but it was bigger than both of them. It felt so, so right when they were together. But of course, it was dynamite. You couldn’t have an affair with your brother’s wife and not expect fireworks. And Serena was riddled with guilt, almost paralysed. He would hold her in his arms while she sobbed, distraught.
‘This is so wrong,’ she would wail.
‘But we haven’t done anything,’ Adrian would assure her.
‘But we want to,’ she’d reply, clinging on and making his shirt wet with her tears.
‘I know ...’
Now, Adrian took a swig of his beer. His mouth was dry with nerves. Every time he went to speak, his nerve failed him and he found something to do instead. Open a packet of peanuts. Tidy away Spike’s Lego. Then he pictured Serena having to tell Philip, and it spurred him on. His was by far the easier option.
‘Mum . . .’
Jane looked up from reading
The Times
with a half-smile. Adrian hesitated again. She seemed so much happier lately, looking so much younger than her years, a sparkle in her eye. He didn’t want to be responsible for bringing her down again, but he couldn’t keep quiet for ever.
‘I’ve got something to tell you. Something important. I think it might be a bit of a shock.’
Jane dropped the paper.
‘It’s not Donna?’ she asked. ‘She’s not taking Spike to Australia? Please, no ...’
‘No. No - nothing like that.’
‘Thank God.’
It hadn’t occurred to Adrian that his mother would jump to the wrong conclusion, but it wasn’t that surprising. Donna was for ever making empty threats she didn’t keep.
Donna had been what he thought was the antidote to Serena. He had fallen for her seven years ago, a stunning raven-haired vixen who ran a vintage dress shop in Frome, where he was living. He had thought her exotic, ethereal, intriguing. By the time he realised she was highly strung, self-centred and delusional, she was pregnant. He couldn’t stand to spend another minute in her company, but he wasn’t going to turn his back on the baby. For months she tormented him, pretending she was going to have an abortion, pretending she’d already had one, denying he was the father. By the time Spike was born, Adrian realised she was borderline insane, and he was determined to do as much as he could to protect his son. Donna, however, didn’t make it easy for him. She didn’t make anything easy for anyone, not even herself. And that was why his parents had bought him his tiny flat, so that he would have a permanent base for Spike whenever he had access. Ever since, the Miltons had all lived in fear that the little boy they loved so much would come to some harm at Donna’s hands, or that she would run off with someone and they would never see her again. The only weapon they had was money - Jane and Graham had continually forked out for things, and it was only because Spike was so adorable that it didn’t cause more resentment.
‘It’s not about Donna,’ Adrian repeated. ‘It’s about Serena. Me and Serena.’
His mother gave him The Look. The Look that made you admit to pinching the last custard cream from the biscuit jar. He swallowed.
‘I don’t know how it’s happened, but it has. We’re . . . in love. And she’s going to leave Philip.’
Jane gave a little laugh.
‘Adrian. Don’t be ridiculous. That’s . . . impossible.’
‘No, it’s not.’ He had to be firm. ‘We’ve been talking about it for nearly a year, and we’ve finally decided.’
‘A year ... ?’
Jane paled as the realisation dawned that her son was speaking the truth.
‘It’s not what we both wanted,’ Adrian told her. ‘The last thing I wanted to do was to break up my brother’s marriage.’
‘Oh, Adrian,’ his mother sighed. She wasn’t angry, Adrian realised. She just looked incredibly sad.
‘Listen, Mum. We love each other. We can’t live without each other. And Serena can’t live with Philip any longer.’
‘But she’s his
wife.
’
Adrian sighed. His mother belonged to a generation who still believed in for better for worse, no matter how bad it got.
‘Mum, you know Philip’s a bastard to her ...’ He felt guilty hitting her with this one, but it was true. Serena had put up with Philip’s callous bullying for years. Just like his own mother had. ‘He’s just like Dad.’
Jane looked up sharply.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Please, Mum. I don’t want to drag it all up. But I know you didn’t have an easy time.’
Jane didn’t contradict him. She put her face in her hands for a moment while she took in the implications.
Adrian looked around, at the walls that were more familiar to him than the home he had grown up in, or the house where he lived now. He knew every knot in the wood, every crack in the floorboards. He remembered as if it was yesterday sleeping in the bunk where Spike was now, the ceiling as low as a ship’s cabin, the mattress lumpy - but why would you care when you had a whole summer by the sea?
He could also remember waking there in what felt like the middle of the night, but was probably only about ten o’clock, and hearing his father berate his mother in that low but insistent voice that went on and on and on. He could never quite make out the words, but he knew they were nasty, because his mother would cry. And he would lie there clutching the ears of his velvet Eeyore, wishing he was brave enough to scramble down and tell his father to stop, but he never had the courage.
They must have loved each other once, just as Serena and Philip must have done. When did love turn to hate, passion to disdain, tenderness to cruelty?
‘She’s going to come and live with me in Frome,’ he went on. ‘She’s going to help me run my business. She’s going to do all the stuff I’m rubbish at. Paperwork, sending out bills, doing quotes. Chasing customers. She’s got loads of ideas how I can expand, and how to market the business. She’s what I need. We’re going to be as poor as church mice to start with, but we’ll have each other. Plus having her there means I can have Spike with me a bit more - she’s happy to pick him up from school while I’m working, instead of him having to go to that bloody aftercare club Donna insists on when she’s at the shop . . .’
He trailed off. The emotion was getting to him, the thought of how different his future was going to be.
Jane finally looked up again. Her eyes were brimming with tears.
‘I understand,’ she said simply. ‘I can’t give you my blessing, because Philip is my son too, and I have to be impartial. But I do understand. What it’s like to love someone.’ She tried to smile. ‘I like Serena very much. And I know she will be good to Spike. Which is, after all, what really matters in all of this.’
Adrian nodded. He found he had a lump in his throat too.
‘I promise you, Mum. This wasn’t some sordid affair. We haven’t even ...’ He attempted a grin. ‘I won’t go into details, but this is about love, not sex, or obsession. She’s good for me, and I know she’s been unhappy. For a very long time.’
Pain fluttered over Jane’s face. It pains every mother to know that their child has inflicted misery on someone else.
‘Philip?’ she asked. ‘Does he know?’
Adrian took a deep breath in. He didn’t like to think about it.
‘She’s telling him right now.’
Serena had given Harry and Amelia twenty quid to go to the Ship Aground for the evening.
‘I need to speak to your father.’
Harry looked at his mother anxiously.
‘Will you be all right, Mum?’
‘Of course.’ Serena smiled brightly, but the fact that Harry even had to ask convinced her she was doing the right thing. She knew both the children had picked up on her unhappiness, and that they both suffered at the hands of their father’s short fuse, his unreasonably high standards, his ability to undermine their confidence. There was always tension in the house. No one ever knew when Philip might strike. He could, after all, be so very, very nice. But the flip-side . . .
Serena no longer thought that breaking up her marriage was going to be a sign of failure. It would be a relief for all of them, and although it would mean upheaval of a different nature, how wonderful to be able to sit at a table and not wait for the acerbic diatribe, the lectures, the grilling. She hugged them both as they left, her beautiful children. Harry, who despite his father’s best attempts to belittle him had done so well, about to start medicine at Bristol. And quirky little Amelia, who found her refuge in her art and was off to do a foundation course instead of A levels, much to Philip’s disgust. They’d be all right; they could come and live with her and Adrian in the holidays, though there wouldn’t be much room. And of course there wouldn’t be The Shack any more, their summer refuge.
It was definitely a time for change.
‘Millie Taplow. Lucy Bartlett. Nicola Morley-Webb.’
Serena kept her voice low and calm as she recited the list of names to her husband. It wasn’t a definitive list, just the few she could be absolutely sure of, given the gossip and the evidence of her own eyes, and the way the girls reacted when they saw her at a social event - none of them was a particularly good actress, none of them could look her in the eye. And none of them, for some reason, could take their eyes off Philip while he was in the room. They were completely transparent. But then, they were very, very young and totally in his thrall.
He just stared back at her, frowning slightly, shaking his head.
‘What about them?’
‘When I go up to speak to a girl at one of your little cocktail parties, and she jumps as if she’s been scalded, and spills her drink, and can’t get away from me fast enough, and spends the rest of the time following you round the room with puppy-dog eyes, what am I supposed to think?’
‘A crush. Hardly proof of anything.’
‘I don’t need proof,’ said Serena calmly. ‘I know and you know what happened. Time and time and time again. I’m not putting up with it any more.’
‘Who’s been speaking to you?’ demanded Philip. ‘That bloody Eleanor Tripp, I bet. Filling your head with all sorts of rubbish, and you know why? Because she’s a frustrated dyke, Serena, and she probably wants to get her hand in your knickers.’
‘Eleanor’s been a very loyal friend.’ Eleanor was another professor on the English course, specialising in medieval literature, and she had provided a very welcome shoulder for Serena to cry on, on more than one occasion. But she had only listened, never judged. ‘And actually, Philip, I’m afraid it’s a bit more serious than that. It’s Adrian.’
Philip blinked.
‘What’s Adrian? What does he know about my life?’
‘I mean . . . it’s Adrian that’s brought this all about. I’m leaving you, Philip, and I’m going to live with him.’
Philip stared at her for a good five seconds, then burst out laughing.
‘Going to live with Adrian? In that squalid little flat in that bloody hippy dippy Hicksville town? With that mad, bipolar witch breathing down your neck? And what are you going to live on, exactly? He manages to bash out about one coffee table every other month. Hardly enough to keep you in the manner to which you’ve become accustomed.’
‘You talk as if you’ve been keeping me in the lap of luxury, Philip.’ Serena’s eyes were cold as they bored into him. ‘When did I last have a new dress? Or a new pair of shoes that weren’t for everyday? Not that money is what it’s about.’ She held up her hand to stop him interrupting. ‘Money’s never been the issue for me.’
‘So what is the issue?’ Philip sneered. ‘Sex?’
‘No. Sex has got nothing to do with it either. It’s about having a chance to be happy.’
‘Happy?’
As an English professor, he seemed to be struggling unduly with the definition of a very simple word. He was completely flummoxed. A combination of shock and not really having a leg to stand on, supposed Serena.
‘What about the kids? What about their,’ he paused for effect,
‘happiness
?’ he finished sarcastically.