Chapter 29
Max
‘Ineed to pick your brains,’ I tell Angus as we get stuck into a ploughman’s lunch in the Oast House. Usually, we’ll just grab a sandwich with the rest of the team in the large barn that houses the offices, but I wanted some privacy.
And I’m glad we chose this option, because there are ploughman’s lunches, and then there are Sorrel Farm ploughman’s lunches.
Scotch eggs with a layer of pulled ham hock, which are so good they should be illegal.
Crumbly Stilton from the farm’s creamery, and chutney made here, in the kitchen.
A steaming mug of cream of tomato soup for good measure.
Oh, and heavenly sourdough, courtesy of Molly and her team. This is hitting the spot and then some.
Angus sighs as he butters a slice of bread thickly. ‘I knew this was coming.’
I stare. ‘You knew what was coming, exactly?’
‘The conversation where you tell me you’re sleeping with Molly and ask me what the fuck you should do.’ He sinks his teeth into buttery heaven.
‘Oh. No, I don’t need advice on my sex life from you, mate. I just wanted to ask you how I can get her away from work and the kids for a few hours. I want to treat her to something special, and I wondered if this place would be an option.’
It hasn’t occurred to me that my brother would know about me and Molly, but the most likely explanation is that it’s come through the female grapevine, directly from the source.
‘So you’re not worried about where things are going with her?’ he presses. ‘You know exactly what you’re doing, I suppose?’
I pick up my mug and take a slurp of rich, warming soup before replying.
‘I don’t know exactly where things are going, no,’ I say evenly. ‘We haven’t really discussed it. But I can handle myself, don’t worry.’
My brother is one of the most mild-mannered guys I know, but even he has his limits, and from the sight of his hand white-knuckling his knife, I’d say he’s close to breaching them.
‘I don’t worry about you handling yourself, believe me,’ he says through gritted teeth.
‘But you’ve got yourself involved again with a wonderful woman and two beautiful little kiddies, all of whom have had the shittiest year ever.
So if you dare break any of their hearts, I swear you’ll have me to deal with. ’
I stare at him in amazement. Fucking hell. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen my middle brother so riled.
‘I’m not planning on breaking their hearts.
They’re all amazing.’ The muscles of my own heart tighten at the mere thought of anyone harming a hair on Molly, Toby or Daisy’s heads.
‘Molly and I are… we’re having a great time.
’ Understatement. ‘There’s a lot of history there.
A lot of unfinished business. You know that. ’
‘And you’re planning on finishing it?’ he asks incredulously. ‘And then what? You fuck off and leave her to pick up the pieces?’
‘No. I—’
‘She’s fragile, you know. Incredibly strong, but fragile too, just because of how much shit she’s been through.’
He doesn’t understand, he can’t understand, the richness of what Molly and I still have.
The joy it’s bringing both of us to have this closeness.
This second chance. And while we rebuild our relationship, moment by moment, I’m also working my arse off to show up for her kids.
Not just for Molly’s sake, because she’s entrusted their care to me in the mornings and because she could use a second pair of hands, but for their sakes, and my own.
I’m trying to build something here. Something special, with all three of them, all the while being careful not to overstep. To rush. Or to over-promise, when I don’t know if I have what it takes to deliver in Molly’s mind.
I scour the recesses of my brain for a metaphor that will explain myself to my brother, who clearly sees himself as the Stafford family’s keeper.
And while I’m bone-deep glad they’ve had him around to play fairy godfather this year, it rankles.
It rankles that he’s been around to watch out for them, when I’ve been in a different hemisphere, totally fucking oblivious.
‘Look,’ I begin. ‘Try to understand. I think about this every second of the day, but Molly and I have only been back together, technically speaking, for a few days, and it’s too early to make some grandiose declaration to her.
‘And in case you’re under the illusion that she’s desperate for me to man up and put a ring on her finger, she’s never given me the slightest indication that that’s the case.’
I can feel a scoff coming on from him, so I hold my hand up to stop him.
‘It’s like she and I are on a road. There are a couple of streetlights ahead of us, but after those, it’s dark up ahead. I’ve got her, and I’m holding her hand tightly. We’re walking towards the darkness, but as we walk, the streetlights nearest to us come on.’
I sit back in my chair. ‘I just have to trust that those streetlights will keep coming on, the more we keep walking into the unknown. That we’ll work out what we want.
What’s possible. Whether I’m enough for her.
But the important thing is that we’re in it together.
No one’s leading anyone down the garden path. ’
His mouth twists sceptically. ‘That was great until you mixed your metaphors.’
‘Oh, give me a fucking break.’
‘Look.’ He shifts in his seat and takes a spoonful of soup.
Unlike me, he’s not so uncouth as to slurp straight from the mug, even though I’m pretty sure that’s why they serve it in a fucking mug rather than a bowl.
‘I get it. I get that it’s hard to know where to go from here.
Just… do me a favour and tread very carefully.
‘You may think you guys are side by side on this, but she has a hell of a lot more to lose than you do if you bugger back off again to Malawi, or Botswana, or wherever the fuck you decide to go next. She’ll be left heartbroken, dealing with two kids who got used to having a man around the place again.
Got used to seeing their mum happy, even if you keep them in the dark about the nature of your relationship. ’
‘I know,’ I say in a small voice, because he’s exactly right, and the reminder is humbling. If Molly and I don’t make it this time, I’ll be just as destroyed as she will, but I only have one heart to guard over.
Not three.
As far as Tobes and Daze are concerned, I’m leaving after Christmas. But that doesn’t make it easier for any of us. It doesn’t mean the three of us haven’t grown attached to our mornings together, to our car journey singalongs, to bath time. To having me around.
As I pile Stilton onto an oat cake, I imagine myself buggering off, and Molly and the kids continuing life as normal.
Angus has it completely wrong, I realise with a shock. They wouldn’t be the most bereft party.
I would.
They’d still have each other, still have their routines in place, still have their messy, chaotic home.
And presumably, they’d find another au pair, someone young and energetic and preferably female, who’d whip the kids into shape and be able to withstand Daisy’s little face when she begs for Nutella in the mornings.
Because, God knows, I’ve become a fucking pushover.
I’d be the one alone, living out of a backpack again, wondering what the fuck I’ve done with my life.
In that annoyingly intuitive way that my brother has (I swear Zoe is rubbing off on him), he asks, ‘Tell me honestly. Can you see yourself staying? Making a go of it with Molly and the kids?’
That earns him some eye contact, because that is about as far from an idle question as you can get.
Angus is asking me if I could see myself throwing off my lifelong insistence that I won’t have children, an insistence that drove an irreparable wedge between Mol and I first time around, and committing myself, not just to her, but, to all extents and purposes, to fathering Toby and Daisy.
Unbeknown to Angus, he’s asked the wrong question. Because the issue at hand, the issue I cannot for the life of me stop turning over in my head, isn’t whether I want this.
It’s whether I’m up to the job.
Whether I deserve the privilege.