Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
‘They’re asleep,’ I told Bridget. ‘Fingers crossed they’ll stay that way – at least until four in the morning, when they wake me up.’
‘Oh, bless you.’ She reached over and touched my cheek. ‘I remember those years like they were yesterday. Funny, because it was all a blur at the time. You think it’ll last forever, but it’s over in the blink of an eye.’
You think it’ll last forever. Her words seemed to have a different meaning – one I really didn’t want to consider right then, or ever, if that was an option.
‘There’s a lasagne in the oven. It’ll be ready in half an hour, but I’ve set the timer just in case.’
Bridget looked doubtfully at the cooker like it was some piece of space-age technology that couldn’t quite be trusted, then at her watch.
‘Delicious,’ she said. ‘Wherever you’re off to, I doubt they’ll feed you so well.’
‘It’s just a Thai place round the corner. Patch is meeting me there when he’s finished at the gym.’
Which hopefully wouldn’t mean me sitting there on my own for ages drinking wine like a Tinder date gone wrong.
‘And you look beautiful. You should wear green more often, with your colouring.’
‘Thank you.’ I’d only had time to throw on a clean jumper over my jeans and put on some mascara while the kids were in the bath, but her compliment made me smile. ‘We should be back by ten, and then Patch will get an Uber home with you.’
‘All set then. Have a lovely evening, Zar— Naomi.’
I hesitated, doubt creeping into my mind. Bridget’s absent-mindedness seemed to come and go – when I’d asked her to babysit so Patch and I could go out for a date night, she’d seemed alert and eager to help. But her vagueness troubled me – what if there was an emergency and she didn’t know what to do?
We’re only down the road. The children are asleep. This is important. What could possibly go wrong?
So I kissed her on the cheek, picked up my bag and left.
The clocks had gone forward the previous week and it was still light, the new leaves on the chestnut trees acid green against the sapphire sky. Soon, the children would be playing in the park in shorts and T-shirts instead of coats and wellies; soon, we’d be planning outings to the seaside, sandcastles and fish and chips.
Maybe. If my conversation with my husband tonight went as I hoped it would, rather than as I feared it might.
As I’d expected, Patch was late. I sat on a wooden bench, my back to the distressed brick wall, sipping pinot grigio and trying not to scoff all the prawn crackers in my anxiousness. The restaurant was busy – couples out for early dinners, families with older children, groups of students drinking lager and making the most of the Tuesday night all-you-can-eat special. Alone on the end of the long communal table, I felt shy and out of place.
It wouldn’t have been my first choice of venue for the conversation we needed to have, but the words ‘all-you-can-eat’ had always been music to Patch’s ears. So I wasn’t surprised when he came striding in, just ten minutes after I’d arrived, his face wreathed in the easy-going grin that had always melted my heart.
‘Hello, beautiful.’ He leaned over and kissed me, and I smelled the shower gel I’d given him for his birthday, which was perfect for the gym because it came in a tiny bottle but cost about a tenner per squirt.
‘Hey. Good day?’
‘So much better now I’m here with you.’ He swung a long thigh over the bench and settled down. ‘God, I’m Hank Marvin. That workout they made us do was extra.’
He launched into what would have been a long explanation about sets of burpees, snatches and cleans (whatever they were – certainly not something he did a good deal of around the house), but fortunately was interrupted by a waitress bringing over our menus.
‘How shall we do this?’ I asked, knowing that there was no point expecting him to focus on anything until the pressing issue of food was dealt with. ‘One each of the starters then share a couple of the mains?’
‘Maybe double up on the chicken wings?’
‘Really? You know I don’t really like them.’
‘But I really, really do.’ He smiled at the waitress, who smiled back. I wondered whether she was thinking: Look at this hunk of a man with his healthy appetite , or God, we always get the greedy bastards on Tuesday nights.
I wasn’t exactly sure what I was thinking myself.
‘Whatever you think,’ I said. ‘Go wild. And I’ll have another glass of wine, please.’
‘And a beer for me,’ Patch said, when he’d finishing placing a lengthy food order.
Soon, platters and bowls began arriving at our table, occupying more than our share of space and forcing the students next to us to budge up. I lifted a couple of sweetcorn fritters and a pork dumpling on to my plate and ate slowly, waiting for Patch to placate the ravening beast that was his post-workout hunger.
‘So,’ he said at last, when the starters had stopped coming and dishes of noodles, red curry and rice had arrived. ‘This is nice. We haven’t had a date night in ages.’
‘Yeah, and your mum said it was a while since she’d had an evening with the kids. So I thought, why not?’ I raised my wine glass and tapped it against the rim of his beer bottle. ‘And besides, there’s something I wanted to ask you.’
‘Is it about you going back to work? Look, we can make it work if we have to, I guess. But are you sure it’s what you really want? You’ll end up spending virtually everything you earn on childcare and?—’
I dug my chopsticks into the bowl in front of me and lifted out a prawn, but my hands weren’t quite steady and I fumbled, letting it fall back before it reached my mouth.
‘It’s not about that,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry – we can talk about that another time. This is something else.’
‘Jeez,’ he grumbled. ‘Here I am thinking I’ll have a nice evening out with my wife and it turns into a summit conference. Okay, hit me with it.’
I waited until he’d piled his plate with rice, pork and salad. ‘Okay. It’s more of a question, really. When did you actually break up with Zara?’
‘Oh, God, Nome. Not this ancient history.’ He put his chopsticks down and raked a hand through his hair. ‘I can’t remember. What are you looking for – day, month, hour?’
I felt a flare of annoyance at his flippancy. ‘Patch, come on. It’s important.’
‘No, it’s not. You and I are together now – that’s the important thing.’
‘It’s important to me,’ I insisted. ‘I mean – not the day or the hour, obviously. But whether it was before or after… you know.’
‘Before or after we shagged?’ he asked, too loudly.
The girl sitting next to him paused, a forkful of food hovering mid-air. Then she put it down and whispered something to the bloke next to her. Give me a second, I need to hear what this couple are saying , maybe.
‘Yes. I mean, no. More like before or after we started going out, like, properly.’
‘Oh, come on.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘What’s properly? We’d known each other for years. We didn’t need to do the whole “exclusive” thing and have a coming-off-the-apps ceremony.’
‘No, we didn’t. Because after we’d got together, I would never, ever have had anything going on with anyone else.’
And for ages before, because as far as I was concerned no one else could ever have measured up to Patch.
‘Naomi.’ He put his chopsticks down and took a long swallow of lager. ‘Here’s the thing. As soon as I met you – okay, maybe not the very first time, but pretty much straight away – I fell for you. I knew it was you I wanted to be with. I tried to do the right thing by Zee. I really, really didn’t want to hurt her. So I put aside my feelings for you for a long time, but it was hard.’
As soon as I met you, I fell for you. He’d never told me that before. Even now, with all the years that had passed, all the times we’d said we loved each other, it gave me a thrill of happiness. If I’d known back then that he’d felt the same as me, right from the beginning, would I have done things differently?
The knowledge was bittersweet. If only you’d told me, everything would have been so much easier.
‘But you were with someone else.’
‘But you were hanging around looking so bloody pretty I could barely keep my hands off you.’
‘That’s sweet. But you did keep your hands off me, because you were with Zara. Until you didn’t. And I need to know whether you were still with her then or not.’
‘For God’s sake. It doesn’t?—’
‘Yes, it does.’
We looked at each other across the table. His face was so familiar – as handsome as it had always been, his eyes the same rich, deep brown, just a few wrinkles at their corners. His hair the same glossy black, just a few silver threads running through it.
I remembered how it felt to love him so much it was like a pain.
He sighed. ‘Okay. Let’s not beat around the bush. There was an overlap.’
‘When we went to that gig in Camden?’
‘Then, and… after. For a bit.’
‘How long of a bit?’
‘I can’t remember!’ He raised his hand, making a fist as if he was about to thump the table, then brought it down again, gently, and placed it over mine.
‘Was it, like, days? Or weeks or what? Longer?’
‘It was… weeks. Maybe a month. Or two.’
My mouth felt dry. I drank the last of the wine in my glass and then a gulp of water. ‘Why did you tell me you’d ended it with her?’
‘Because I didn’t want to fuck things up. I knew, really early on, that you were right for me and Zee wasn’t. You were – you are – everything I’d always needed. Smart, gentle, loving. I wanted you to be the mother of my kids, even back then. I knew how amazing you’d be at that. But Zee – come on, you know her as well as I do.’
‘What about her?’
‘She’s volatile. Unstable. I didn’t want to hurt her. And…’ A shadow passed over his face – an echo of the conflict I’d seen back when I was first falling in love with him.
‘And what?’ I asked gently.
‘I was worried about what she’d do – how she’d react.’ He twisted his paper napkin like he was wringing water out of it. ‘I had to time it right, let her down gently.’
‘Your timing doesn’t look like it was so great from where I’m sitting.’
‘Yeah, well.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe I should have done it sooner. My bad. Hindsight’s twenty-twenty, right? But at the time, I thought I was doing the right thing.’
‘I tried to do the right thing, too,’ I said. ‘But I still don’t know if it was right.’
‘If what was right? You and me, or – something else?’
I remembered how I’d felt back then, about the secret Zara had asked me to keep. How dishonest it had felt – how disloyal to Patch and mostly to myself. But loyalty to Zara had won out – until it hadn’t.
I still hadn’t broken that promise, not for all these years. Should I break it now? Could I?
‘Patch,’ I began hesitantly, ‘did you know – when Zara couldn’t see you on your weekends off – did you ever suspect there might be something else going on?’
‘What are you talking about? I knew what was going on.’
My mind whirled. Patch was a kind, tolerant man – always had been. But surely he wouldn’t have blithely carried on a relationship with a woman he knew was cheating on him, however deeply he’d been in love with her?
Before I could formulate a question, he carried on. ‘She told me about her brother. She was ashamed – she didn’t want anyone else to know, so I promised I’d never tell.’
I leaned in towards him, confused. The restaurant was noisy – the students next to us had given up eavesdropping on our conversation and were laughing and cheers-ing one another; perhaps I’d misheard him. ‘Brother? What brother?’
He shrugged. ‘See? She never told anyone but me. But I don’t suppose it matters any more; he’ll have been released by now.’
‘Released? From – prison?’
Patch nodded. ‘He was serving a sentence in Greece, for smuggling cocaine. She said he’d always been troubled. She went to visit him there when she could, and sometimes that coincided with my weekends off so we couldn’t see each other. It was one of the reasons why I – why I wanted to protect her. I didn’t want anything else bad to happen to her.’
My chopsticks were frozen halfway between my bowl and my mouth. I had no idea what to say. Maybe the story about Zara’s brother was true and what she’d told me about seeing other men wasn’t. Maybe it was the other way round. Maybe both things were true – or neither.
But I knew one thing for sure – I’d wanted to protect Patch from hurt then and I still did now. Telling him she’d lied to him and betrayed him might have helped me get what I wanted then, but it would achieve nothing now that I had it.
His lie about having broken up with Zara made a bit more sense now. He’d wanted to protect her, even though he’d gone about it in the clumsiest possible way. But his actions had had another consequence – one I doubted he’d even considered at the time. He’d made me into the other woman; he’d made me betray my friend. And now all my protestations to Rowan about how things had happened had turned out to be lies, and Zara’s version of events the truth.
‘Still though,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t feel right. It feels like you’ve been lying to me, all this time.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake. Naomi, stop raking over the bloody past. It’s done now. What matters is— Is that your phone ringing?’
‘My – shit.’ I bent over to retrieve my bag from the floor, banging my head on the table on the way back up. My eyes watering, I fumbled through it until I found my phone.
‘It’s your mother. God, I hope the kids are—’ I swiped to answer the call. ‘Bridget? Hi. Is everything all right?’
For a moment, I thought the call had failed – all I could hear was a high-pitched electronic wailing.
Then I heard my mother-in-law’s voice, sounding panicked and shaky and suddenly very old. ‘Naomi? The smoke alarm’s going off and I can’t make it stop.’