I go to the bathroom, intending to cleanse my face of all makeup, then apply gentle, clinically formulated toner (which looks suspiciously like coloured water), moisturize, brush my teeth with whitening toothpaste and settle down for a full night’s sleep.
Oh, sod it.
I enter Ryan’s room, take off my clothes and slip into bed next to him, warming my skin against his. I wrap an arm round his torso and press my cheek to his neck.
His smell – so clean and sexy it’s a shame it can’t be bottled – sends blood pulsing through my body and I find myself pushing my hips against him. He stirs and turns towards me in his half-sleep, pulling me in tightly as his leg wraps round mine. ‘You’re back,’ he whispers, his mouth so close I can taste the toothpaste on his breath.
‘I didn’t mean to wake you,’ I reply, stroking the side of his face with my thumb.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ he murmurs, kissing me slowly.
‘Okay, so I did.’ I smile as our bodies move against each other in a slow rhythm.
‘Hey, I’m not complaining.’ He kisses the side of my face, sending butterflies across my skin.
‘No?’
His fingers glide across my back, radiating warmth. He brushes his lips against my ear. ‘Definitely not.’
We make love until morning, late enough to be precariously close to the time when the children are due to wake.
We dress slowly – between kisses – and while Ryan pulls on his T-shirt, I find myself raising a question I’ve thought about a lot lately. ‘You never talk about your wife,’ I say softly.
Ryan, T-shirt half on, stops what he’s doing and I wonder whether bringing this up was a mistake. I search his eyes anxiously.
‘I know.’ He finishes pulling on the T-shirt and sits on the bed next to me. ‘I never used to think of myself as one of those guys who couldn’t express their feelings. But I guess I’ve proven comprehensively since Amy died that that’s exactly what I am.’
He pauses.
‘It might help to talk about her sometimes,’ I offer, but as the words tumble from my mouth, I realize what a hypocrite I am. I haven’t talked about Jason – or my cancelled wedding – to
anyone.
Not properly, anyway. And yet somehow this feels different, in another league. What Ryan has been through puts my problems in the shade.
Ryan nods, as if he believes what I’m saying – he just doesn’t know how to do it. Then he stands up and goes to the window, his back to me.
‘We met when we were both just out of college,’ he says, keeping his voice steady. ‘I’d played the field a lot. Never found anyone I wanted to get serious with. Then I met Amy and all that changed.’
‘What was she like?’ I ask.
He turns slowly, leans on the window-sill and smiles, transported back to another time, another place. ‘Smart. Funny. Forthright. She would never have taken any shit from me.’ He laughs.
‘No?’ I smile.
‘Uh-uh.’ He shakes his head fondly. ‘The way I was when you first met me, the
mess
I was, she’d have hated that. She’d have said, “For Chrissake, Ryan, pull yourself together. Get a shave and stop being such an asshole.” ’
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ I tell him. ‘You went through a lot. Not many people have to cope with being widowed and left with two young children.’
‘I didn’t handle it well,’ he insists. ‘Right from the beginning, I didn’t handle it well at all.’
I don’t say anything.
‘When I got the call to say she was in hospital, she’d been in a car crash, I – I . . .’ He pauses to gather his thoughts. ‘It’s difficult to describe what I was feeling. I just couldn’t take it in. I
wouldn’t
take it in – wouldn’t believe it. She’d only been on her way to collect her friend, Keeley, less than five miles away. They were going shopping and I was watching the kids. Samuel was still real young and – well, you know how demanding tiny babies can be on their moms. This was supposed to be an afternoon off for her.’
‘So what happened?’ I ask.
He closes his eyes and lets out a long sigh. ‘It was a head-on collision with some guy who’d just held up a 7–11. He was driving like a maniac, turned a corner without looking and basically ended up in the windshield of Amy’s car.’
‘Did
he
live?’ I ask.
‘No. And it’s a good thing, ’cause I’d have killed him otherwise.’
I bite my lip.
‘Sorry,’ he says, lowering his eyes.
‘Nobody can blame you for feeling like that.’
‘Anyway,’ he continues, ‘by the time I got to the hospital I can’t remember much, except I was screaming and shouting like a lunatic, demanding to know why the doctors weren’t doing more to save her. The fact was she died instantly. There was nothing they could have done.’
‘And where were Samuel and Ruby while all this was happening?’
‘Keeley – Amy’s friend – came over to look after them. She was amazing, with hindsight. It was she who had to tell Ruby what had happened. I was just . . . too freaked out. And the worst thing is, I never even see her, these days. She waved at me once when she saw me across the street in the city but I got away from her as quickly as I could. I guess that sums up my attitude to the whole thing since it happened. To pretend it never did.’
‘That’s why there are no pictures of Amy.’
He screws up his nose. ‘This is stupid . . . simplistic – but the fact is that it’s always hurt too much looking at her, talking about her, thinking about her. So I guess, without even knowing it, I decided early on I wasn’t going to do any of that. Which I know isn’t good for the kids and probably isn’t all that good for me either.’
‘You’re talking about her now,’ I point out.
‘Yeah, I am.’ He pauses. ‘And, actually, it feels okay. Good, even.’
I smile.
‘You know,’ he continues, turning back to the window, ‘I think Amy would have approved of you, Zoe.’
‘Really?’ I’m taken aback.
‘Yeah,’ he replies. ‘She would.’
I feel sudden panic about this statement, about whether I’ve misinterpreted what Ryan might be expecting from this relationship. I mean, yes, I like him a lot. And, okay, spending time with him certainly beats moping in my mother’s spare bedroom.
But he’s not Jason.
I look up at him again and tell myself I’m imagining things. He has poured out his heart to me because the timing is right for him to do so. He’s moving on – he’d do the same with anyone. No, this is still very much a fling, for him and me.
Suddenly the creak of the door breaks my train of thought and Samuel’s unruly blond curls appear round it like the top of a vanilla ice cream.
‘Zo-eee?’
he mumbles sleepily. ‘I want Cheerios. Please.’
Ryan walks over to him, picks him up and gives him a huge hug. ‘Zoe and I are coming downstairs now, Buster, so we’ll get you some, okay? She was in here having a talk with me about something.’
Just as I get downstairs, I’m contemplating when to go over and see Trudie when my phone beeps to announce the arrival of a new text message.
‘Don’t pick yr hat yet, lv,’ it reads. ‘Weddings off.’
Chapter 68
Less than half an hour later Trudie comes over. Her eyes are so bloodshot from crying she might have spent the last twenty years drinking vodka for breakfast.
‘He can’t have called it off just like that?’ I ask.
‘No, no, he didn’t,’ she clarifies. ‘He says he still loves me. But he wants time to work out what he needs to do.’
I sigh as we wander outside to collect the mail. ‘You did the right thing,’ I say, feeling about as qualified to give advice on the matter as Tinky Winky.
‘I was right to accept his proposal in a packed bar, then drop a bombshell on him twenty minutes later?’ she says. ‘I take it you’re kidding?’
‘Okay, your timing wasn’t great,’ I admit, ‘but lots of people would have done the same thing in that bar. I mean, talk about pressure. That woman in the blue top looked ready to garrotte you if you’d said no.’
‘Maybe. But the thing is . . . Are you all right? Zoe, what’s up?’
‘What? Oh . . .’ I stare at the letter in my hand. ‘I’ve told you about these funny letters Ryan’s been getting.’
‘Yes, I remember you saying.’
‘Well, it looks like he’s got another.’
‘Christ!’ Trudie exclaims. ‘Have you asked him about them? I mean, you two are an item now, so it’d be perfectly reasonable.’
‘We’re not
an item.
’
She raises an eyebrow. ‘Whatever you say, love.’
It’s much later in the day, when the children are tucked up in bed, that I finally get to speak to Ryan. ‘You had another of these today,’ I tell him, strangely sheepish as I hand over the envelope.
He’s about to take it when he realizes what it is. ‘Shit. I thought they’d dried up.’
He takes the envelope and stuffs it into his back pocket, then carries on looking for a beer in the fridge. I feel about as satisfied with his response as someone who’s queued up at a customer-services department for three hours only to find it closed.
When I first saw one of those letters I was mildly intrigued. Back then, I was nothing more than an observer in Ryan’s life. They were a jigsaw piece in an incomplete picture I had of him: bad boy, womanizer, alluring scoundrel.
But now that I’m
more
than an observer, I can’t help feeling something else about them, something I don’t like.
What Ryan and I have may be little more than an extended holiday romance, an amorous diversion from the realities of life, but the reappearance of these letters represents a dark reminder of his past – and potentially his present. They are a reminder that, no matter how convincing he is when he snuggles up to me, no matter how loving and tender he appears, Ryan is no boy-next-door.
The writer of these letters, whoever she is, once found solace in his arms as I do. And, no matter how silly this is –
for God’s sake, I’m still in love with someone else! –
that makes me feel strangely insecure. Jealous, even. And it isn’t nice.
‘Um . . . who are they from?’ I ask, trying to be non-chalant.
He spins round and scrutinizes my face. I’m clearly about as good at nonchalance as I am at lion-taming.
‘It’s someone I had a
thing
with one time,’ he tells me. A very brief thing. It was absolutely nothing. No big deal. Really.’
‘She doesn’t seem to think so,’ I can’t help pointing out.
‘Well, I know, but I have a very simple tactic. Ignore her letters. They’re really not a big deal.’
‘What if she finds out about me? I’m not going to have some bunny-boiler trying to get me, am I?’
‘Nah,’ he says dismissively. ‘She’s a psycho, but I’d back you in a fight any day.’
I feel about as reassured as someone who’d just found out Sweeney Todd had been assigned to do their cut-and-blow.
‘Don’t
worry,
’ he stresses. ‘Anyway, she doesn’t know about you.’
Don’t worry.
Words guaranteed to make me worried.
‘Okay, then.’ I can think of only one way to put my mind at rest. ‘If you’re convinced she doesn’t know about me, maybe I could see the letter.’
‘What? You don’t want to—’
‘Ryan, I won’t sleep otherwise,’ I interrupt. ‘Come on, humour me.’
‘I can think of far better ways of humouring you.’ He smiles.
I reach into his pocket. He snatches the letter out of my hand so rapidly he nearly takes my fingers with it.
‘I’m really worried now.’
‘Okay,’ he concedes. ‘You win. But at least let
me
open it.’
I watch as he rips open the envelope and stares at the page. His expression is difficult to read.
‘Well?’
‘You don’t want to see this.’ He puts the letter behind his back.
‘I do!’ I squeal, attempting to wrestle it off him.
‘No, really you don’t,’ he says, twisting away from me again.
‘Yes, really I do,’ I reply, knowing I’m as likely to defeat Ryan physically as Cherie Blair is to win the Eurovision Song Contest.
‘No, you—’
‘Ryan!’ I snap. ‘If you don’t let me see that letter I’m only going to think it’s about ten times worse than it probably is. So, show me it, will you?’
He hesitates. Then, slowly, he brings the letter round to where I can see it and, reluctantly, hands it to me.
Ryan
You bastard. You absolute bastard.
And do you know what makes this so much worse? She is at least two dress sizes bigger than me.
Juliet
I look up at him, my mouth ajar.
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘So maybe she does know about you.’
Chapter 69
From: [email protected]
Dear Zoe,
I cannot believe you’re not coming home for Christmas.
I
cannot believe
it!
After all we’ve been through this year, I’d thought at the very least we could sit down as a family and have a nice Christmas together. Is that really too much to ask? I mean, it’s not as if I haven’t sat back and let you go off to America without so much as batting an eyelid. Publicly, anyway. I’ve just sat at home worrying myself sick but not saying a word because your father wouldn’t let me.
If you’re concerned about seeing Jason out and about, then don’t be. I haven’t so much as bumped into him in the street – and neither has anyone else. It is as if he’s disappeared off the face of the planet. Which is fine by me. Mars would be the best place for him.
I know this probably won’t make the slightest difference to your decision, but I was intending to tell you something when you came home. Something extremely important that I found out at my appointment with Dr Ahmed yesterday. It isn’t pancreatic cancer or wheat intolerance but I promise you it’s just as serious. So much so that I really don’t feel I can break the news to you in an email. Or over the phone. But if you can’t even be bothered coming home, then I won’t bother telling you.