Chapter 25
Having left the cafe well behind her, Jenna had driven slowly down the road towards her house. She was surprised to realise that her heart wasn’t thumping and she didn’t feel sick. Instead, she felt a grim determination and just hoped that Joel was indeed waiting for her at home.
As she neared the property, she saw that his car was parked on the driveway, which meant she had to park her own car on the street. He’d clearly decided he was back for good and could do as he liked.
She walked past his car, with half a mind to scrape her keys along the bright yellow paintwork. It would serve him right, after everything he’d done, but she knew she was better than that. He really wasn’t worth the effort.
The front door was unlocked, as if he’d been expecting her. She pulled a face as she saw his bags of clothes lying in the hallway. No doubt she’d be expected to wash and iron them for him before putting them back in the wardrobe.
She went through to the living room, but he wasn’t in there. She found him sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, a resigned look on his face.
‘I heard you met up with Annette,’ he said without any preamble.
So she wasn’t Nettie any more then? Jenna dropped her keys on the table and sat opposite him. ‘I did. She wasn’t at all what I expected.’
He gave a bitter laugh. ‘She wasn’t at all what I expected either. Talk about slovenly. And that house… The Addams Family would have felt right at home there. Did she tell you I’d left her?’
Jenna’s lips twitched. ‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘She did say that she’d kicked you out, though.’
‘Kicked me out?’ Joel sounded outraged. ‘I left her! I couldn’t stand it a minute longer.
’ His tone softened and he gave Jenna one of his winning smiles.
‘I’ve been such an idiot, haven’t I? I don’t know how you put up with me.
You said it was just a fling, and you were absolutely right.
I should have listened to you from the start. ’
She waited for the apology, but naturally it never came. Instead, Joel got up and walked round to sit next to her. He put his arm around her, not seeming to notice as she flinched away from him, repulsed by his touch.
‘I’m home now,’ he said soothingly. ‘I know it must have been hard for you, these past few weeks, but it’s over. Let’s put it behind us, shall we? We should do something to celebrate before you have to go back to work.’
Jenna couldn’t stand it any longer. She pushed back her chair and stood, glaring down at him.
‘Listen to yourself! You’re talking as if you’ve done nothing wrong. Do you really think I’m just going to welcome you home with open arms? Have you any idea what you put me through? And what about the twins?’
Joel’s eyes widened in shock. ‘Well, like I said, I know it must have been hard for you – all of you – but I’m back now. I can make it right.’
‘How? How do you think you can put this right? How do you expect us to trust you ever again? What makes you think I even want to try?’
Joel opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. He sighed and slumped in his chair, looking completely defeated.
Jenna watched him curiously for a moment, then she sat down again and thought for a moment.
‘You… you don’t really want this, do you?’ she asked him quietly.
Joel rubbed his forehead wearily. ‘Of course I do.’
‘No, you don’t. Why can’t you just be honest with me for once? There’s no point in lying to me any more, Joel. We’ve gone way past that. You see, I’ve finally realised the truth. It was bad enough when I figured out you didn’t really love me.’
‘I do love you, Jenna,’ he protested. ‘I really do. It’s not that…’
‘No. If you really loved me, you wouldn’t have done the things that you’ve done to hurt me,’ she said.
‘That’s not love. I do believe,’ she added hesitantly, ‘that you have feelings for me of a sort, but it doesn’t really matter any more.
The fact is, you don’t love the twins, do you?
Not in the way they deserve to be loved.
Not in the way they should be loved by their own father. ’
Joel turned to gaze out of the window for a moment, and Jenna sat quite still, holding her breath, waiting for him to finally tell her the truth.
The truth she’d at last acknowledged, after all those years of deluding herself.
Years when she’d refused to see what was patently obvious when you put all the pieces of the jigsaw together.
Joel didn’t love his children. He didn’t want to be a father. He never had.
‘I wish I felt differently,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve tried. I really have. I just can’t feel it.’ He turned to face her, and she saw genuine shame in his eyes. ‘You must think I’m a monster. I think you’re probably right. I never wanted children, Jenna. You know that. We’d agreed—’
‘We had,’ she said, ‘but accidents happen and once we decided to keep the baby I thought you’d changed your mind.’
‘I thought I had, too,’ he said. ‘When it came to making the choice and you said you didn’t feel you could go through with it – not having it, I mean – I thought I would feel differently when it arrived. But then we found out it was twins and I just went into panic mode.’
‘And had an affair,’ she said bitterly. ‘And left me.’
‘Yes.’ He shrugged. ‘I just wanted to escape, and someone offered me a route out of it all, so I took it. But it didn’t work out and I knew I had to at least try to be a father. I hoped it would be different when the babies were actually here. I thought I’d feel differently then.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘I like the twins, don’t get me wrong. They’re good children and I’m fond of them.’
‘Fond of them?’ Jenna shook her head, tears stinging her eyes. ‘They deserve so much more than that.’
‘I can’t give them more than that,’ he said simply. ‘I tried. It’s just not in me. I don’t want to be a father, Jenna.’
‘But you are a father!’ she cried. ‘It’s too late to change your mind now. You can’t just decide they’re not a good fit and send them back for a refund.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’ His eyes were shining with tears and he sounded desperate. ‘Look, I’ve come back. I’ll try again. I’ll do my best to make it up to you all. What else can I say?’
Jenna realised at that moment that there was nothing else he could say.
He’d already told her all she needed to know.
She thought about Sam buying the girls riding lessons, how he knew that Ada was mad about Heatherstone, that Hallie was always the more confident twin.
He’d figured that out in a matter of weeks.
She’d bet anything that Joel knew barely anything about his daughters.
She’d taken Joel back the last time he’d left because she’d loved him more than anything and anyone. But that wasn’t true any more. He wasn’t the most important person in her life any longer.
Hallie and Ada. They were the most important people.
She’d had no idea that such love was even possible, but when she thought about her daughters her heart lifted with joy, and she wanted nothing more than to make them happy, to let them know how much they were loved and wanted. She was even missing them now.
She’d thought, for a long time, that it was important for them to have their father in their lives, and she’d struggled to deal with Joel’s obvious lack of interest. Now she realised there was no need to struggle any more.
Joel wasn’t capable of giving them the love they deserved, and if he really didn’t want to be in their lives, they were better off without him.
‘You don’t want to be with us, do you?’ she asked calmly. ‘Not deep down. You’ve only come back here because you don’t know where else to go.’
Joel sighed and leaned back in his chair.
‘I just go from one catastrophe to the other,’ he admitted at last. ‘I always think it will be better next time, but it never is. I do care about you, Jenna. I care about the twins. But I don’t want…
this.’ He waved a hand around the kitchen.
‘Married life, children, it’s just not for me.
I feel trapped and miserable. Why do you think I spend so much time at work?
I’d rather be there than playing happy families with you here. It bores me. Do you understand that?’
‘I think,’ she said coldly, ‘that I’m finally beginning to.’
‘If there was anything I could do to change the way I am…’
‘But there isn’t. You should have been honest with me from the start.
Have you any idea how unhappy I’ve been all these years?
Trying so hard to please you. Trying to be the woman I thought you wanted me to be.
Keeping this house immaculate because you hated anything out of place.
Trying to ensure the twins didn’t get on your nerves.
Farming them out to my mum as much as I could so I could spend time on the career you wanted me to have – and with you!
’ Her voice rose and she practically spat the last word at him.
‘I missed out on so much time with them because I was stupid enough to love you. I wanted to make you happy. I was so scared you’d leave again if everything wasn’t perfect.
And all the time I was wasting my life away and wasting precious time with the most beautiful girls in the world.
I should have been with them! Not trying to climb the career ladder because you’d decided that was what really mattered.
Not trying to please you at all! You took that from me. ’
‘I didn’t ask you to do anything,’ he protested.
‘You didn’t have to. You just made it so bloody obvious.
’ She ran her hands through her hair, remembering all those years of fear, tiptoeing around him to make sure he didn’t leave them.
Trying to convince him, without fully realising what she was doing, that the twins hadn’t changed anything – that life could go on as it always had, as he’d wanted it to.
Going against her every instinct to keep him happy. For what?
The first eight years of her babies’ lives had been nothing but anxiety and dread and appeasement.
When she should have been making the most of those precious years, she’d been trapped in a web of lies, deception and contempt.
Because whatever he said about caring for them, the fact was his so-called love wasn’t worth anything.
He’d treated them all with contempt. If he’d really cared, he’d have left them a long time ago so they could get on with their lives in peace.
‘Well,’ he said dully, ‘now you know. What do we do now?’
‘I think,’ she said, ‘that you need to find your own place. We can’t live together, that much is obvious, and the twins need some stability.’
‘You really want us to separate?’ he asked, clearly taken aback. ‘Officially?’
‘Joel, we’re already separated,’ she pointed out. ‘The decision’s already made. Now we have to get on with it.’
‘You sound so cold,’ he said. ‘I never thought you could be like this.’
‘Neither did I,’ she told him. ‘This is about Hallie and Ada and how we make it easiest for them. They’re at primary school until they’re eleven.
I don’t want to disrupt their lives any more than I have to until then, but when they’re ready for high school, we can put this house on the market and split the proceeds.
Move on. In the meantime, you’ll have to rent somewhere, unless you think you can afford to buy a flat in town? ’
‘You’re really prepared to let me go?’ he asked, and she really couldn’t tell if he was delighted or dismayed by the realisation.
‘What about the twins?’ she said. ‘Do you want access or…’ The look on his face told her everything. ‘I guess not then.’
‘I will see them,’ he said hastily. ‘Just… just not every weekend. Once a month should be okay, shouldn’t it?’
‘Let’s start with that and see how it goes,’ she said heavily.
She could see the future already. The visits to their father’s petering out until they didn’t see him at all.
She could only hope that they’d come to terms with that.
She would do her utmost to make their lives so happy and full of love that they wouldn’t feel his loss so badly. She just hoped she could succeed.
‘What about now?’ he asked. ‘Do you want me to hang around? Explain it to the twins?’
‘Explain what to the twins? They already know we’ve separated. You took care of that at Gillan’s, remember? What else is there to say, unless you want to tell them that you don’t love them? Even you can’t be that cruel, surely?’
‘No. No, that’s not what I meant at all. I take your point. I guess there’s nothing much else to say, is there? I’ll get my bags and go.’
They both stood and Joel went over to the sink to rinse out his coffee cup. ‘Well,’ he said, looking round the kitchen one last time. ‘I guess this is it.’
‘I guess it is.’
It was funny. She’d always thought that, when this moment came, she’d be in pieces. A sobbing wreck. Now all she felt was relief. It was finally over. This long, torturous game was finished. She was glad.
‘Where will you go?’ she asked, following him into the hallway where he stooped to collect the black bags.
He shrugged. ‘I’ll try Louis’s house. If Sandie lets me stay a while, I’ll be okay there.
If not, I suppose I can stay with my mum.
’ He pulled a face and she didn’t blame him.
If anything should have warned her how Joel would turn out, it was probably his cold-hearted mother.
‘It won’t be for long anyway. I’m sure I can find a house or flat somewhere pretty quickly with my salary.
’ He hesitated. ‘We should talk about money.’
‘Not now,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Let’s leave that to our solicitors, shall we?’
His eyes widened a little, as if he was only just starting to realise the implications of what was happening. Solicitors. Divorce. It was all suddenly very real to him.
‘I suppose that would be best,’ he said at last. ‘I hope you’ll be all right, Jenna. All of you.’
‘We will be,’ she promised. ‘We have family to help us. People who love us. Really love us.’
‘Lucky you. What will you do now? Are you going back to Kelsea Sands or—?’
‘I am,’ she said, feeling her spirits rise even as she thought of the little village between the sea and the river. ‘There’s nowhere I’d rather be.’
As she watched him drive away, she leaned her head against the front door for a moment, thinking about everything that had just happened between them.
Despite it all, she wished him well. She hoped one day he’d find someone he truly loved, who’d love him in return.
He hadn’t had much of a loving upbringing, that was for sure.
But that wasn’t her problem any more. Joel wasn’t her problem any more. She had a life to live, with her beautiful daughters, her mum and Mac, her grandparents and great aunt and uncle and Rosie and…
Sam?
She locked the door behind her and got back into her car. It was time to put the final piece of the jigsaw of her life into place.