Chapter 9
9
Lucie was trying to pay close attention to the directions of the man in the high-vis vest, who was guiding them out of the depths of the ferry’s parking deck and into the queue of cars heading towards the enormous metal ramps and dry land.
The Jag, despite her practice drive around town and the time spent on the motorway to the ferry port at Dover, still felt like a beast to handle on tricky manoeuvres like this. Yes, she’d once driven a sleek saloon car almost as long and as wide as this, but she was now used to driving her little Nissan. Parking, even turning a corner, all felt like major operations. Everything about the Jag was bigger, stiffer and more difficult. Honestly, it was like driving a bus.
Calm down , she told herself as she drove hesitantly forward. You’ll get the hang of it. Zoe, however, did not look so sure. From the passenger’s seat, she glanced over with a look of concern as Lucie struggled to move the gearstick from first up to second.
‘I’m just not used to it,’ Lucie said.
‘That’s kind of obvious,’ Zoe replied.
‘I’ll get there,’ Lucie insisted.
‘Here’s hoping.’
Lucie glanced in the rear-view mirror at Deva. He had his headphones on, was bouncing slightly to his music and mouthing the words to whatever song he was listening to. Although it was dark, he seemed to be looking out of the window with enthusiasm at everything. On the ferry crossing, while Lucie and Zoe had looked for quiet window seats and even spent some time out on deck, queasy at the motion of the ship, Deva had rushed around exploring and wanting to experience everything.
He’d drunk volumes of Coke and only come back to them now and then to exclaim: ‘The onboard shop has all this fantastic stuff!’ or ‘There’s a movie room!’ and ‘I am loving the slot machines! Pinball!’
Yes, on the ferry, Deva had been the human equivalent of a pinball, batting about from deck to deck, restlessly rushing from one thing to the next.
Lucie manoeuvred the car into the queue and then laboriously onwards through the checkpoints. Finally, when their passports had all been checked and stamped, she nudged the beast out onto the road, self-consciously keeping to the right-hand lane as they began to follow the directions from the satnav and the road signs to Paris.
‘Next stop, Paris!’ Deva exclaimed from the back seat.
‘Next stop, a quiet snooze,’ Lucie told him, glancing at the new French time in the corner of the satnav screen – 1.44a.m.
After negotiating two roundabouts that required all her concentration, then spending another twenty minutes on the road, Lucie saw a turnoff for a service station ahead and decided to take it.
‘We can use the loos, wash our faces, then park up for a bit of a sleep,’ she told her passengers.
‘Good idea,’ was Zoe’s response, and she waved at Deva, who slid his headphones down so that Zoe could explain where they were going.
‘Sleep?’ he exclaimed, eyes shining as he took in the lorries, the cars, the bright neon lights of the service station. He made it sound as if sleep was a totally impossible idea, which was possibly the effect of all those Cokes on board the ship.
But the funny thing was, once they’d all used the loos, bought bottles of water and settled back down into the car, Deva was the first to fall asleep, nestled up against the pillow he’d made from a comfortable-looking sweatshirt, headphones down around his neck.
‘He looks sweet and much younger asleep,’ Lucie whispered. ‘And how are you doing?’ she asked Zoe, who had wound the big leather passenger’s chair down as far as it would go and was trying to get comfortable.
‘Not too bad,’ Zoe replied, also keeping her voice low. ‘One advantage of a huge car, the seats are very nice.’
‘Maybe we should have got a hotel for tonight too?’ Lucie fretted.
‘No, we’re fine. A few hours’ nap now, followed by a good long drive, and then we’ll sleep well at the hotel tonight.’
‘The hotel did look nice, on the website anyway. It’s in a little village, in the hills,’ Lucie told her.
‘Sounds good…’
Then there was a long pause and Lucie hoped Zoe was managing to drift off, but out of the dim darkness in the car came the unexpected question, ‘Mum? Do you miss being married to Dad?’
‘Oh… right…’ was Lucie’s first and rather startled response.
This felt as if it was coming at her out of the blue and she really did not want to re-hash any of the long, fraught divorce conversations she’d had with her daughter back when it had become inevitable that this was what was going to happen between her parents.
All that time Lucie had spent reading online advice about ‘how to handle divorce with your grown-up children’. It turned out to be not much easier, and no less of a shock, than if you divorced when your children were young. In fact, if anything, some articles had warned about the resentfulness of grown-up children, the deep-seated worry that their childhoods had been built on a lie, and they could no longer trust their happy memories.
‘I loved Miles very much, for years,’ she began.
‘I know that and I believe that,’ Zoe said. ‘But what about now when you’re on your own in that little place? Do you miss him? Are you lonely?’
Those felt like two very separate questions.
‘I miss a lot of what I used to have, Zoe. I miss our lovely house. I miss the security, the luxury even, of when our businesses were going great guns and there was plenty of money to go round,’ Lucie admitted, feeling a wave of the sadness that she was always working to keep at bay. ‘And then there are those normal, empty-nest feelings. I miss you being small, you being at school, even you and all your friends landing on us in between university terms and eating the fridge bare. I miss those gorgeous holidays…’
‘Oh yeah, me too,’ Zoe added.
‘Life seems very quiet now.’
‘Oh dear, Mum,’ Zoe sympathised.
‘And…’ – Lucie struggled for the best way to put this – ‘I miss the version of your dad that I was in love with. But the person he turned into for me – and I’m not saying it was the same for you, and of course there was all the stress to blame – but how he behaved to me in those last few years… It was very disappointing. Too disappointing,’ she added. ‘I can’t forgive him. I will probably never forgive him. And I’m sorry if that’s hard for you to hear.’
‘OK,’ was all the reply Zoe made.
Lucie paused before adding, ‘I don’t miss all that drama from our final year. It was too hard. No one should put their wife through that. And yes, I’m sure my life now looks small and pretty dull to you – with my little flat and commuting to my little job, but at least it’s all mine. I’m in charge of it. No one can come in and pull the rug from under me. It feels safe,’ she said. That was the word. It wasn’t exciting. It wasn’t glamorous, but yes, it was very safe.
‘After everything I’ve been though, safe is fine with me.’ Smiling at Zoe, Lucie added: ‘I’m really looking forward to your baby girl arriving. I’ll want to be very involved with her. I hope that’s OK with you.’
‘Totally fine with me,’ Zoe said. She’d turned onto her side and her voice sounded sleepy. Whatever she thought about her mother’s reply to her question, she wasn’t telling. But at least the air seemed to have cleared a little between them. Lucie hadn’t mentioned Rafi and thought that it was better not to for now.
In the hour that followed, Lucie wound her seat back a little, but not enough to intrude on Deva’s space. She closed her eyes, she tried to count backwards from one hundred, she worried about how tired she would be if she didn’t sleep now, but sleep would not come.
Instead, she found herself thinking about that other cardboard box under the spare bed at her father’s house. Not the one with the tissue paper and the Chanel clothes, but the smaller, older one that she’d seen again when she’d pulled the cream boxes out for Deva.
That box was the one disturbing any chance for her to rest now. That dress… that photograph that she’d found after all those years… that man. How could something that had happened so long ago be suddenly taking up all this space in her head all over again?
It was her age, she thought, classic mid-life crisis territory. Or it was the fact that she was alone after so many years of being married. That was why she’d got all wistful and nostalgic and was now going over and over the feelings she’d had back then. Endlessly wondering if she should have waited for Clark to come back from the States instead of rushing into her relationship with Miles – as if there was anything she could do about it now.
She tried to tell herself off, tell herself to get it together. She was trying to be content with the flat and the job and the life she’d rebuilt from the shambles of the divorce and the closure of her business. And there must have been good reasons that she had barely thought of Clark in all this time. Maybe I was too busy, she thought now. Maybe I was suppressing it. Maybe I was determined to convince myself and everyone else that Miles was the right decision. A good decision.
For goodness’ sake Lucie, pull yourself together. But she could feel tears sliding down her face.
He wasn’t available , she reminded herself. But here came the hard, smooth pebble of regret. But I never let him know how I felt.
Maybe if she’d been brave enough to do that – then everything would have been different.