Chapter 70
Rachel
During the summer following Emma’s A-levels, Lawrence takes her on holiday to Turks and Caicos, where he informs her, off the back of one too many rum punches, that he and I never stood a chance when we were together, because I was still in love with Josh.
I doubt he does this out of spite; we are long past pettiness, I think. Perhaps these are even his true feelings, and the rum punch just brought them out.
A few hours after she gets home, Emma finds me upstairs, prone on the carpet in my bedroom, doing a poor impression of somebody attempting yoga. Ingrid sent me a link to a teacher she rates on YouTube, but I’m struggling.
It’s at moments like these that I occasionally fantasise about having taken that pill, so at the very least I might be able to perform basic flexibility exercises without feeling like I need a shot of WD-40 first.
Emma perches on the edge of my bed. She’s wearing her school leaver’s sweatshirt and a pair of faded leggings. Her blonde hair, made several shades lighter by Caribbean sun, is pulled into a long plait.
‘Mum, did you dump Dad because you were still in love with Josh?’
A jarring feeling in my chest. I sit up, back creaking. Lawrence’s and my official line, when it comes to our daughter, has always been the truth – that we drifted apart.
‘No. Who told you that?’
Emma repeats what Lawrence said. She looks bruised, and I feel the ache of it pass to me. Bloody Lawrence, always putting his foot in it. How he got to be CEO of a FTSE 100 company without ending up in jail for insider trading, I will never know.
‘I’m so sorry Dad said that to you, sweetie.
But he’s wrong. He and I split up because we weren’t working.
It was nothing to do with Josh.’ I kneel in front of her and take her holiday-brown hands in mine.
They remind me, fleetingly, of summers past, of ice creams and sandpits and dancing through water fountains.
She nods thoughtfully. ‘I read Graveyard Heart on the plane.’
I swallow. ‘What did you think?’
‘I think Josh wishes you’d never broken up.’
I feel my stomach roll over as she holds my gaze.
‘What about you?’ Emma says.
‘What about me?’
‘Do you wish you’d never broken up?’
‘No. Because then I wouldn’t have you. I wouldn’t swap the last eighteen years for anything, darling.’ I’m surprised, as I tell her this, that a sentence can be truer than anything I’ve ever said, yet still feel like a lie.
‘Do you still love him?’
I meet her lagoon-blue eyes, feeling my breath buckle.
‘God, you do.’
‘It’s complicated,’ I whisper.
A few moments pass.
‘And sad,’ she says eventually.
‘Yes,’ I say, because I only want to be honest with her now.
After that, we just sit together for a while, holding hands in the magnolia hush of my bedroom. The one I used to share with Oliver.
Soon after my father’s funeral, Oliver started sleeping in the box room across the landing. He said this was because he knew he snored. But I wondered if it was all related to our struggle to conceive. What it had done to our sex life. The unexpressed resentment, the ego-blow.
All issues we could have discussed in therapy, if Oliver had given it more than two sessions before declaring it to be a waste of time and money. He’d been stiff and uncommunicative throughout, proving he was far more emotionally buttoned-up than I’d ever realised.
I’ve been wanting to confide in Emma about all this, but now I’m not sure. Might she start to question my entire relationship with Oliver – and perhaps then hers, too?
‘I love you, Mum.’
My heart jolts me back to her. ‘I love you too.’