Chapter 28 #2
‘I’d better head back to the flat,’ I said.
‘I need to check on Hercules.’ He’d been on his own for much longer than I’d expected.
If I went out on a Sunday, Maria or another member of the team always went upstairs to give him some attention and freshen up his water so he had at least had some company today.
I turned to Jed. ‘Are you going to stay here tonight?’ I said it in a tone which I hoped would convey that I thought it was for the best if he did.
‘Yeah, I think I should.’
‘No need to stay for me,’ Lucy said. ‘I’m fine. Just another failing to add to her ever-growing list. That woman is definitely on Santa’s naughty list this year.’
It was all said flippantly but I suspected it was a cover-up for the real hurt Lucy was feeling. How couldn’t she be? It was a lot to take in and, even if she wasn’t feeling the full impact of her mother’s actions now, she could well have a delayed reaction to them.
Lucy ran her fingers across her cheek. ‘I’m going up for a shower. I still feel icky from that make-up and I swear I’m wearing half the glitter from their wands. I’ll see you soon, Dad.’
She gave Jed a hug and a kiss on the cheek and was about to pull away but he held her tighter. ‘I need to take Tara home but I’ll be back soon.’
When she didn’t throw in another objection, it confirmed for me that she needed her dad tonight.
‘Well, that was certainly a day of revelations,’ Jed said as he pulled off the drive.
‘Wasn’t it just? How are you holding up?’
‘I feel like I’m in a bad dream or caught in the middle of an elaborate, sick prank. Who does that? Who leaves their kids and jumps on a plane to Australia? It’s a spectacularly shitty thing to do.’
‘I agree, and especially when Billy’s ill. I don’t want to defend her but could she be ill herself, mentally I mean? Nobody in their right mind would think it’s okay to do what she’s done.’
Jed shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s possible. She’s always been scathing of anyone with mental health problems before – thinks they should pull themselves together and stop making such a fuss – but that doesn’t make her immune to it. As you say, that’s not normal behaviour.’
‘They should pull themselves together and stop making such a fuss?’ I repeated. ‘And she’s a nurse?’
Jed gave me a sideways glance and rolled his eyes.
‘Believe it or not, a very good one too. Yeah, I know. Doesn’t tally, does it?
’ He sighed. ‘The ridiculous thing about all this is that, if she’d told Pam and Billy that she wanted to try and fix things with Declan and could only do that face to face, I guarantee they’d have offered to look after the kids while she flew back to Aus.
They could have put things in place like getting the twins into a nursery or sorting a childminder.
Instead, she’s gone about it in the most underhand way possible with the maximum hurt and inconvenience. Typical Ingrid.’
‘Do you think she’ll come back?’ I asked.
‘The million-dollar question! I keep going over what she said in the pub and I can’t shake this nagging feeling in my gut that she’s gone for good.
She never cries but she sobbed bucketloads about it being over with Declan and we’re not talking fake tears.
She was genuinely distraught. She said she couldn’t live without him and her note reiterated that.
There was also something about Declan hating their life and about her trapping him into marriage and kids which he’d always been clear he never wanted.
What if she’s so smitten with him that she’d permanently ditch her children if they were the only barrier to them being together?
What if she has no intention of coming back and that suggestion about me raising the kids was never about us doing it together but about dangling Aaron as a carrot and hoping I’d go for a three-for-one offer?
She must know that Pam and Billy can’t look after them permanently – it’s too much to expect a couple in their seventies, one of whom has cancer, to bring up toddlers. ’
‘Could she really be that calculating?’
‘I wish I could say no but she’s already proved she is.’
Jed dropped me off at the end of Castle Street and I told him to ring me if he needed to talk, even if that was in the middle of the night.
I gave Hercules a huge hug before wandering into my bedroom to change into some cosy loungewear.
He’d only stayed over for two nights but, already, the flat didn’t feel right without Jed.
Spotting his bag beside the bed, tears pricked my eyes and a lump blocked my throat.
It wasn’t just Jed’s absence making me feel tearful – it had been an emotional day across the board.
‘I need cheering up,’ I said to Hercules. ‘Fancy a Friends fest?’
I grabbed a random DVD from my shelves and cuddled up with Hercules on the sofa, immersing myself in a world that made me laugh, brought me comfort and could take my mind off everything hurtful.
As I settled down to sleep a couple of hours later, I pictured Piper and Savannah covering Lucy in make-up and how sweet the pair of them were.
Jed and I had agreed that we didn’t want children together but if a scenario arose where Ingrid really had cleared off with no intention of ever returning and she meant what she said about Jed raising her kids, I absolutely would step up and be a mum to Piper, Savannah and Aaron.
How couldn’t I? I knew how it felt to lose your parents and to feel like there was nobody who really wanted you and there was no way I’d let those three children doubt how important and loved they were.
I didn’t want to give too much thought to getting close to them in case Ingrid returned full of remorse, ready to set up a new life with the children here or, worse, to take them back to Australia.
But we’d been talking earlier about trusting our guts and my gut was telling me that, if things worked out with Declan, Ingrid wouldn’t be back.