Chapter 38
The party was in full swing downstairs with most people taking advantage of the roulette wheel and the other gambling entertainments that had been laid on after dinner. As she and Nick walked along the landing, Thea realised that she was still shaking.
‘What’s wrong?’ Nick asked. His tone was gentle, and Thea felt her eyes welling with tears.
‘It’s so stupid…’ Impatiently, she scrubbed at her eyes, forgetting that Cora had done quite a detailed job with her eyeshadow. ‘Bugger,’ she muttered as she caught sight of the dove grey powder on her knuckles.
Nick glanced across the landing, and then, seeing there was no one else there, he pushed open the door to the nearest room and led Thea inside.
‘Why haven’t they locked up?’ Thea, despite her upset, gave a nervous laugh.
‘Dunno, but let’s not worry too much.’ Nick closed the door quietly behind them.
He didn’t switch on the light, as the moon was doing a pretty good job of casting a silver torch across the main part of the carpeted area of the room, which had a four-poster bed to one side and a chaise longue underneath the window.
Nick led her to the chaise, and Thea sat down beside him.
‘Talk to me, Thea.’ Nick spoke softly. ‘One minute you were right there with me, the next you seemed like a deer in the headlights. What’s going on? Did I do something wrong?’
‘Oh, Nick,’ Thea sighed. ‘Can you just, for one minute, stop holding yourself responsible for absolutely everything?’
Nick looked taken aback, but he rallied. ‘OK,’ he said carefully. ‘But if it’s not me, then why don’t you tell me what is bothering you?’ He reached out and took one of her hands in his. ‘I want to help, Thea. Honestly. You can trust me.’
That was the crux of it, Thea thought. Somehow, instinctively, she did trust Nick.
She wanted so badly to let him in, to confide in him exactly why she had been so freaked out, but she felt so ashamed of it all.
Ashamed that she’d been taken in so easily by Ed’s lies, that she’d put up with it for so long, that she’d almost allowed herself and her two children to become homeless because of it, and that, even now, she berated herself for allowing things to go on for so long.
‘I want to,’ she said quietly. ‘I really want to be able to level with you, Nick, but it’s so hard to say all of it out loud.’ She choked back a sob. ‘I didn’t realise until just now how much it all still affects me. But the last thing I wanted was to spoil our evening like this.’
‘You haven’t spoiled anything.’ Nick moved closer to her, and she felt the warmth of his arms around her.
‘I’m here for you, Thea. I want to be here for you, if you’ll let me.
And if you don’t want to tell me everything, or anything, right now, that’s fine too.
Just know that I’ll be here when you want to talk to me. ’
‘Thank you,’ Thea replied. She paused. ‘And before you ask… this isn’t about Mum and Dad.’ She gave a hiccough that was almost a bark of ironic laughter. ‘I mean, I know that you know all about that, and we’ve all been through it hundreds of times over the years. I can’t blame them for this.’
Nick tightened his hold on her, and Thea felt intensely reassured. ‘Understood.’
Thea braced herself. Even though she, Nick, Tristan, Annabelle and Jamie had been friends for so long, none of them knew the true extent of her troubles with Ed, and the real reasons for their subsequent split.
She’d put on a brave face for the outside world and glossed over the serious issues they’d faced as a couple, and most of the time she felt as though she truly had moved on from the damage he’d done to her trust. Perhaps it was because she’d begun to make herself vulnerable now, embarking on this new relationship with Nick, that she’d succumbed to a trigger she hadn’t felt in years.
‘Ed had a gambling problem,’ she said quietly.
‘I didn’t know until really late on. When it started, he’d assured me it was nothing more than a bit of fun.
Some blokes like the pub, some play five-a-side football once a week, Ed liked casinos.
He’d go out once a month with mates from work to a place in Bristol, have a few drinks and a flutter and come back again.
’ She began to twist the silver bangle she was wearing around on her wrist. ‘At first, he’d shrug off any losses – but then, over time I noticed his mood became dependent on whether or not he’d had a lucky night.
Sometimes he’d come back euphoric, and other times the gloom would last for the rest of the weekend.
I learned not to ask too much after he bit my head off once too often. ’
‘I’m so sorry, Thea.’ Nick’s quietly shocked tone illustrated that he really hadn’t had a clue about any of it. ‘That must have been a real strain for you.’
Thea nodded. ‘It was, but it got a lot worse when he started using his phone. Poker, online slots, sports betting… it was suddenly all there, any time he needed a fix. What had been a once-a-month social thing became an addiction. By the time I realised what was going on, we were up to our eyeballs in debt, and we needed to sell the house to cover it.’
‘That’s when you moved into your gran’s annexe,’ Nick said. ‘I remember you coming back to Lower Brambleton, when the kids were really small. I wanted to reach out to you, but I wasn’t quite sure how. No one really knew what had happened between you and Ed.’
Thea shrugged. ‘I wanted to keep it that way. Tristan knows, of course, but I asked him to keep quiet – and Gran knows most of it. I had to tell her, when we needed a place to live. The kids were so tiny, and I had nowhere else to go.’ She blinked back more tears.
‘It’s stupid, but I’m so ashamed that I let myself get taken in by what he did.
How could I have been so stupid? I turned a blind eye to it, and buried my head in the sand because I didn’t want to face the truth.
It was only when the court orders and County Court Judgements started arriving in the post that I let myself believe how bad things were.
We had no choice but to sell our house, and the money I’d inherited from Mum and Dad had all gone into buying the place.
Ed, at least, had the decency to leave once he knew the game was up, but once the debts were all paid off it didn’t leave much left for me and the kids.
That’s why we ended up in Gran’s annexe until I could get myself straight again. ’
‘And the bastard hasn’t ever had the guts to make good?’ Thea could hear the anger in Nick’s voice.
‘We’ve had no contact with him since he left,’ Thea sighed. ‘Until recently, when Cora got a message from a boy who claims to be her half-brother.’
‘What?’ Nick’s hand stiffened under her own. ‘When?’
‘Just after her birthday. So it looks as though I might have to make contact with Ed again, for the sake of the kids.’
‘You don’t have to do anything, Thea,’ Nick said gently. ‘Just because some boy has been in touch with Cora, it doesn’t mean you have to respond.’
Thea shook her head. ‘It’s not as simple as that.
’ She felt a slight feeling of unease that Nick couldn’t grasp the complexity of the situation.
‘I can’t just ignore this. There are children involved – not just Cora and Dylan, but at least one other child of Ed’s.
I have to be the adult in the situation, to protect my kids. ’
‘Of course you do,’ Nick replied. ‘And I can’t pretend to understand what that feels like. But you’ve come so far since those awful days, I would hate to see you dragged back into a situation you didn’t want to be in.’
Thea turned towards Nick. ‘I promise that’s not going to happen.’ She reached out a hand to touch his cheek. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added. ‘I’m ruining your evening, aren’t I? You can go back to the party if you like. I don’t mind.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Nick murmured into her hair. ‘I’m staying with you, and when you’re ready, we can get out of here.’
‘But it’s still so early.’
Nick shifted on the chaise longue so that Thea could see the moonlight reflected in the serious expression of his eyes. ‘I’m staying with you,’ he repeated.
Thea felt a rush of gratitude mixed with something much stronger as she took a deep breath to steady herself.
Nick had listened to her and had been there for her as she’d admitted something she hadn’t talked about in years.
The tumult of emotions she felt as she looked at him was confusing, but some instinct drove her to silence the voices now.
Before she could second guess herself, she leaned forward and kissed Nick hard on the mouth.
He stiffened in surprise, before she felt him responding to her, and as they continued to kiss, Thea felt the strange, but reassuring combination of passion and security.
She wondered, not for the first time, why they hadn’t got round to this years ago.
Things would have been so different if she’d got together with Nick and not Ed…
As they broke apart again, Thea’s heart was thumping in her chest.
‘Shall we get out of here?’ Nick asked, a husky note in his tone.
‘Absolutely.’ Thea stood up and pulled Nick to his feet. ‘But, if it’s all right with you, I don’t want to go home just yet.’
Nick smiled at her in the moonlight. ‘It’s a good job I tidied the house before I left then, isn’t it? Shall we have a coffee at my place?’
‘I’d like that.’ Thea smiled back. ‘I’d like that very much indeed.’
Slipping down the stairs, not bothering to say goodbye to anyone else, they headed for home.