Chapter 1 #4
‘Whether we go to The Moonlight Room or not, maybe it’s time to get out of here?
’ Rowan looked at Odette again, who nodded vigorously in response, and she couldn’t help smiling.
Okay, so it may not have been quite the night she’d had planned, and it looked like they might end up heading home well before 10 p.m., but it had been fun.
There’d been lots of laughs, a bit of putting the world to rights, and thankfully Pippa was entertaining rather than obnoxious when she got drunk.
She’d said she was going to make the most of her first night out in months and she warned them that she hadn’t eaten anything all day, other than half a slice of toast that one of the kids had left at breakfast. So it was probably no surprise the first couple of drinks had gone straight to Pippa’s head, which had made her even keener to order more.
Odette clearly had no intention of going on to The Moonlight Room and Rowan was happy to call it a night too.
It didn’t matter that the evening had been cut short, it had more than served its purpose in reminding her just how many amazing things she had in her life, and just how good a night off from all her responsibilities, laughing and talking with her friends, could be.
She’d probably end up getting home before James even got back from the food bank.
Friday evenings were always busy, especially this close to the end of the month, when people’s money had run out.
They also had children to feed over the weekend, with no free school meals to bridge the gap.
It was another reminder how lucky she was.
Her children had never had to go without, and she’d never had to face the dilemma of having to choose heating or eating, or going hungry so that her children didn’t have to.
Her family lived in the grounds of an exclusive private school, in a bubble that protected them all from the hardship that so many other people had to face.
She was incredibly lucky and she never wanted to forget it.
In their situation, it was no wonder James felt the need to help out with other charitable causes and give up so much of his time to support people who really needed him.
It would never be enough to just be chaplain to a bunch of privileged children.
Her friends were right, James was almost certainly worried and distracted because of some of the work he did.
He wouldn’t want to burden Rowan with it, when he knew the stresses of her own job and the expectations of parents at the school weighed so heavily on her.
As soon as they were at home together, she was going to talk to him properly.
Not about their sex life, but about what else it was that was worrying him and what she could do to help alleviate his burden.
It wasn’t just Rowan who felt the impact of him growing more distant, it affected the children too, especially Theo.
She’d seen her son try to get his father’s attention, but he never really did, because James was far more concerned with other people’s children.
She admired her husband immensely for all the work he did, but she couldn’t allow that to come at such a cost to their own son.
She didn’t want Theo to go through the things she had as a child, when her parents had seemed incapable of ever putting her first. There had to be a balance.
She loved James, he was an amazing man, and the first thing Rowan was going to do was to let him know that.
She wasn’t going to ask him to change who he was, but they needed to find a way forward together.
‘Yes, let’s get out of here before we get barred. You can dance all the way back to Membory Grange if you want to, Pippa, just please promise me you won’t try to twerk in the street.’ Odette linked one arm through Pippa’s, and Rowan did the same on the other side.
‘I can’t make any promises.’ Pippa shrugged. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to go home. You two can be party poopers if you like, but just walk with me as far as The Moonlight Room and leave me there.’
‘One thing at a time, we’ve got to get you down the stairs first!’ Rowan laughed again as they headed out, looking like they were in training for the three-legged race at sports day and needing a hell of a lot more practice to get it right.
Once they were out on the street the cool night air seemed to work a little bit of magic in sobering Pippa up.
‘I think you’re right about The Moonlight Room being a bad idea; it’s freezing and I just want to go home and put my feet on Daniel to warm them up.’ She rested her head on Rowan’s shoulder for a moment. ‘He’s soooo lovely. He always lets me put my cold feet on him, to leech off all his body heat.’
‘He’s a keeper alright.’ Rowan smiled into the darkness. A few hours earlier, she might have felt another stab of envy at her friend’s words, but she was counting her own blessings now too and she couldn’t wait to get home either.
‘I’m impressed with the pace you’ve picked up, Pippa.’ Odette still had her arm linked through Pippa’s on the other side. ‘I did think we might have to suggest stopping off at the food bank and getting James to help carry you home. We’re virtually going past the door anyway.’
‘I’m not that bad, I’m just tipsy that’s all!
Tipsy Pipsy, that’s me.’ She laughed at her own stupid joke as they rounded the corner of the road where the food bank was.
It was less than half a mile back to the school grounds and Rowan was confident now that they could make it, although a big part of her was hoping they did bump into James.
She liked the idea of them walking home together and maybe slipping her hand into his.
It wouldn’t be about making any kind of move, just reconnecting in a casual, easy kind of way, and maybe taking the first steps towards getting back on track.
They were thirty metres away from the entrance to the food bank on the opposite side of the road when James suddenly emerged with a group of other people, including Izzy. Rowan’s first instinct had been to yell out his name, but something stopped her.
‘Look, it’s James!’ Pippa’s loud exclamation was too far away to be heard and Rowan tightened her grip on her friend’s arm, pulling them all into the doorway of an estate agent’s, where they wouldn’t be seen but still had sight of James.
‘I know, but Izzy is there too and I just want…’ All the doubts had suddenly come flooding back. ‘I just want to see them say goodbye and I don’t want him to know I’m watching.’
‘Right, gotcha.’ Pippa gave an exaggerated nod and made an elaborate show of putting a finger to her lips and loudly shushing Odette, who hadn’t said anything yet, but who then began to whisper.
‘It doesn’t look like anything suspicious to me. They’re all just saying goodbye and everyone seems to be getting the same hug.’
‘I know, but I just want to wait.’ Rowan kept her voice low, but her heartbeat was pounding in her ears and she held her breath as she kept her eyes firmly fixed on her husband.
She watched him hugging his fellow volunteers in turn, including Izzy, but there was nothing to mark her out from the others, who headed off into the night one by one.
A few seconds later, Izzy turned away from James too, walking in Rowan’s direction, holding the hand of a young man who looked to be about the same age as she was.
The two of them had been the last to leave, leaving James standing outside the food bank on his own.
‘I don’t want her to see us standing here; we need to pretend we’re looking at houses or something.
’ Rowan pulled her friends back out of the doorway, until all three of them were facing the window of the estate agent’s and harnessing their inner Meryl Streep, pretending to peruse the best the local housing market had to offer.
Rowan watched Izzy and her companion out of the corner of her eye, still hand in hand and completely oblivious to the three women, until they reached the end of the street and rounded the corner.
‘See, I told you James wasn’t the type; all that worrying for nothing!’ Pippa shook her head, before loudly hiccupping. ‘Come on, let’s all go home and warm our feet up on our lovely husbands.’
‘Why don’t we try and catch up to James now?
’ Odette turned to look at Rowan and she’d been about to agree, when another figure emerged from the food bank.
He and James were talking as the other man locked the door.
There was nothing out of the ordinary about it, until the man suddenly turned to face James, the two of them illuminated by the light of the streetlamp, and the world seemed to move in slow motion as James reached up and put a hand on the back of the man’s head, drawing it down towards him and kissing him in a way that was so unmistakably filled with passion that acid bile rose in Rowan’s throat, shock and nausea presenting the very real possibility that she might throw up.
‘Oh shit.’ Pippa’s mouth fell open as the words tumbled out, and Odette gasped in a way that made it feel like she’d sucked all the air out of the world, just for a moment.
But it wasn’t her friend’s dramatic intake of breath that had knocked the wind out of Rowan, it was the realisation that all the feelings she’d wanted him to have for her belonged to someone else.
Her greatest fears had become a reality in that instant and as she struggled to remember how to breathe, she knew nothing in her world would ever be the same again.