The Stepmother (28 page)

“I guess that would put a huge strain on any marriage.”

“A strain, maybe. Not an end.”

“Why did it end?” I asked. Lucy looked at me sharply. “Sorry,” I replied quickly, then thought better of it. “Bea did end it, though, didn't she?”

“Yes,” said Lucy.

I saw Faith emerge from the side door marked
TOILETS
. It was now or never. “Do you think she's ever regretted it?”

Lucy opened her mouth. Then closed it. Then opened it again. “I don't know.”

A waiter appeared at our table with a loaded tray.

“Great,” said Faith, coming up behind him. “I'm starving.”

“Another bottle?” said Lucy, looking away from me.

“Why not?” I said. The more we drank, the more I might glean, and maybe, somehow, in the absence of straight answers, I could fill in the blanks. But, after that, the conversation stayed off Jimmy and Bea. Purposely, I thought.

 

E
ARLY THE FOLLOWING
F
RIDAY MORNING
I drove James to the airport. Of course I was nervous about a weekend alone with the girls, but I was excited too. Well, I was trying to be. Trouble was, James kept scattering seeds of doubt in my mind.

“Now, are you sure you don't want me to call Bea and reorganize the
weekend?” It wasn't the first time he'd suggested it. “She won't mind, you know.”

“I'm sure she could do with a few days off before the holidays start.”

“She won't mind,” he said again.

“No. It's all planned.”

“Well, I think you're mad.”

“They're your children.”

“Exactly,” he said, laughing.

“We'll be fine. Anyway, I have a little something up my sleeve.”

“What?”

“I can't tell you. It's a surprise.”

“Do we need Bea's permission?” he asked. My anger spiked. “It's not parachuting,” I said.

“My advice. Keep it as low-key as possible. Park, maybe, if it isn't raining. Other than that, videos, puzzles, and drawing. Make it as easy as possible on yourself.”

I'd noticed that was his way of doing things. “What about cabin fever?” I asked. “They'll get bored. So would I.”

He shook his head despairingly. “Ignore me at your peril but, whatever you do, don't take them to a museum. They're packed on weekends and it's a nightmare. Or the aquarium or—”

“Anything fun. I've got it.”

“That's not fair.”

“It's okay. We'll play Guess Who? for forty-eight hours. It'll be great.”

“I don't play Guess Who? for hours.”

Yes, I'd noticed that too. “Stop fretting. We are going to have a fun girly weekend. Don't you worry.”

“Nail polish isn't allowed—”

I whacked him hard on the thigh.

“Ow.” He looked at me. “Do that again.”

“Pervert.”

“God, I don't want to go,” he said, stroking my cheek. “I hate being away from you.”

I leaned into his hand, which was a bit dangerous, since I was driving, and kissed it. He groaned. “Come with me.”

“Then who'd look after your children?”

“Bea wouldn't mind.”

“It's about time we stopped asking Bea to pick up all the slack.”

James took his hand away.

“What?” I asked.

“It's our exit,” he said, pointing.

“Oh.”

I signaled and pulled into the left-hand lane. “James, I wasn't saying you're slack, I was just saying—”

“I know. What do you want me to bring you from L.A.?”

A ring would be nice? “Um…Robert Downey Jr.—no, make that an Owen Wilson to go.”

“I'll see what I can do,” said James.

We fell into silence. I negotiated my way off the motorway. A week holed up in L.A. at the infamous hotel Château Marmont didn't sound that bad, actually. Things were always better between us when we were on our own. That was the easy part of being a couple. It was all the rest that made it difficult. I glanced across at him. But it was worth it. “All I really want is for you to come home safely.”

“I will,” said James.

“And no sampling the local wares.”

“Not my style.”

So you say, but how would I know? Stop it. Linda was polluting my mind. “James?”

“Yes?”

“Why did you and Bea split up?”

“That's a mighty curious question. Most people ask, ‘What terminal?' at about this point.”

“What terminal?”

“Three.”

“Okay. Good. So, why did you and Bea split up?”

James frowned. “Why do you keep asking me that?”

“I want to make sure someone explained it to Amber.”

“She was ten, Tessa.”

“I know, but shouldn't she—”

“The reasons are not important as long as the children know it wasn't their fault.”

What scary book did you read that in? “How do they know that if you don't give them a reason?”

James fussed with the volume button on the radio. Impatiently, I switched it off. “Please, James. I really want to know. Why?”

“What did Faith say to you?” he asked suspiciously.

“Nothing. This has nothing to do with Faith.”

“Well, something must have prompted this rubbernecking curiosity.”

I felt as if he'd slapped me. I wasn't fishing for gossip here. I was agreeing to marry a man whose previous marriage had failed. Bea wasn't some evil, neurotic cow. Everyone liked her. I couldn't blame it all on her. Something had happened. Unless I understood, I would never know where I stood. With Amber. With any of them.

“Let's not argue before I go away,” said James, putting his hand on my leg. Rather than soothing, it felt heavy. Guilty.

“We're not arguing. I'm trying to ask you a question about something that affects our future. I don't know why you can't talk about this.”

“Divorce isn't fun.”

“Of course it isn't. I don't dispute that. But I really think it might help things between Amber and me if I—”

“Things with Amber are fine.”

“James, they aren't really. You must know that. She's cold, aloof—”

“Well, it was hard on her.”

“Exactly, so tell me.”

James retrieved his hand and shoved it under his opposite armpit. “We did our best for the girls, in the circumstances. If you had children you'd understand.”

I was trying to be sympathetic, but that made me angry. “Don't pull that one on me. That's not fair.”

“Pull what? Come on, Tessa, let's start again. I'm sorry.”

“You're just saying that because you don't like where this is going.”

“Christ, a man can't win.”

I scowled for half a mile. James stared out of the window.

“Why can't we have a normal conversation about this? All I did was ask you a simple question—”

“No, you asked me an impossible question.”

“You don't know why you and Bea split up?”

James didn't reply. Instead he shook his head despairingly and looked out of the window again. Blood. Out. Of. Stone. Just like Amber. I counted to ten and started again, determined, if anything, to reverse this escalation. “James, I know this is difficult for you, and I know and love that you just want everyone to be happy, but I think something is going on with Amber—”

“You should speak to that godson of yours. She was fine until he came along. Now she barely speaks.”

“So you
have
noticed it?”

“Of course I've noticed it.”

“So why didn't you talk to me about it?”

“Well, you're quite blinkered when it comes to Caspar—”

“
I
'm blinkered!”

“Tessa, he's seventeen, Amber's fourteen. She's the one who needs protecting. Bea and I just…” James patted his jacket pocket and checked his passport. “Could you pick up my—”

“Bea and you just what?”

James chewed the inside of his lip. “Thought it better if…She's very young and…Look at your face! No wonder I haven't spoken to you about this.”

“You and Bea what?”

James took a deep breath. “Decided it would be better if they didn't see each other.”

I was furious. I clenched my fists around the steering wheel and locked my jaw.

“That's why I didn't say anything, I didn't want to upset you.”

“Well, you failed.”

James placed his hand on my leg and spoke in a placatory voice: “I'm sure you're right and it was just an accident, but Amber was very shaken. She barely spoke to Bea and she won't say anything to me—”

I couldn't take any more. “Why do you think I'm upset?”

“Admitting that Caspar is capable—”

“No, James. I would be happy to sit and discuss what happened that night. With you, with him, with Amber, with Bea too. If Caspar got carried away, I personally would prefer to know, so that we can make sure it never happens again, with Amber or anyone else. If Caspar doesn't know his own strength, or doesn't hear ‘No,' Jesus, James, I want to know that! But, no, you and Bea decided between yourselves not to talk to me. Worse than that, you haven't even tried to get to the bottom of this, and I tell you, not only does that make me feel like shit”—I could feel the tears and was damned if I was going to let them out—“it makes me mistrust you both.”

“I'm sorry. Please let's not fight about the children again.”

“Don't fool yourself, James. We're not fighting about the children.”

“Amber and I would never—”

I lost it and shouted so loudly I shocked myself: “I'm not talking about you and Amber!”

I stopped the car at the barrier of the short-term parking lot. I took the ticket that the Dalek spat at me and watched the metal arm lift. I would have preferred to throw him out at Departures without slowing down, but I had been told by someone never to go to sleep on an argument. Boarding a plane was worse. James was going away for a week, and I didn't want this knot of anger to turn malignant.

The air darkened as I aimed the car up the narrow corkscrew hollow and we drove up in silence, past floors packed with row upon row of boxy cars, until we reached the roof. For a fraction of a second, I had a terrible urge to put my foot to the floor and
Thelma and Louise
it over the edge. The impact of something concrete would feel like a relief after all this uncertainty. I slipped the car into an empty space and turned off the engine. Counting to ten wasn't working. I felt panic rip through me. Panic that I was losing James. I brushed away the tear and forced myself to look at him.

“What aren't you telling me?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“James, please…How can I understand anything if I don't know what's going on? People fear what they don't understand. It makes them suspicious, nervous, insecure. If you hide things from me, this isn't going to work.”

James clamped his hands together. “I feel incredibly disloyal having this conversation.”

“I'm supposedly going to be your wife. Don't I deserve a little loyalty too?”

He looked at me seriously, then nodded reluctantly. “She had an abortion.”

“What? Caspar—”

“Not Amber! She's a child, for heaven's sake. Bea.”

“You mean Bea had an abortion?”

“Yes. Now you know.”

I waited for the penny to drop. It didn't. “Sorry, James, I don't understand. Why did Bea have an abortion? When?”

“I can't believe you thought it was Amber.”

“We were talking about her.”

“I thought you wanted to know why we split up? What was going on between us? Well, now you do. I talk to Bea about the girls because she is their mother. I'm sorry that makes you feel left out, but you can't let it. Though that isn't up to me, it's up to you. I've told you a million times how I feel about you, but it's not enough, is it?”

“Blind faith is hard when you feel like you're being kept in the dark,” I said, and I still was. Women have abortions all the time. “Why was that the end of your marriage?”

“Nothing I tell you will undo the fact that I was married and had three children. Don't you see that?” James sounded cross.

“I don't want to undo that fact, I want to understand. I need to be able to.”

James was quiet for a moment or two. Finally, focused somewhere I couldn't see, he started to speak. “A couple of years after Maddy was born. It was quite late in the…um…pregnancy.” He was visibly uncomfortable. Oh no, poor James. Poor Bea.

“Was there something wrong with the baby?” I probed gently. Did James make Bea have an abortion against her will? Was that the thing he didn't want to tell me? He'd bullied her into it—

“No,” he replied quietly. “It was a perfect, healthy little boy.”

Oh no, worse. A mistake. A bad scan. Incorrect findings—

“Except that it wasn't mine.”

“What?”

“The baby wasn't mine,” he said again.

I was stunned. Of all the permutations, of all the possibilities, Bea's fidelity to James I had never questioned. Why not? Because I couldn't imagine being unfaithful to this man. I couldn't imagine needing to. Bea had an affair. The perfect ex-wife had slept around and got pregnant. Poor, poor James. I reached out to him. I watched a range of emotions cross his face. Shock, disbelief, anger, then shock all over again. “How did you find out?”

“It was one of those extraordinary things. I shouldn't know to this day. I wish I didn't. But Bea was away with the girls over half-term. I was at home. We had a flood, a leak—can't even remember now. It was the middle of the night and I had no idea who we were insured with. Bea did all of that. You probably think that's pathetic—”

“Pretty usual, I imagine.”