Chapter 13
‘Tilly and I met at university,’ Will said once we’d settled on a different sofa each.
He’d explained to Edith and Jordan when they’d come down to say goodnight that I was staying in the attic study, due to the snow.
As predicted, Edith’s narrowed eyes and Jordan’s assessing gaze had evaporated once he mentioned the Snow Day tomorrow.
‘I can stay up late, then?’ Edith had said, after doing a little happy dance. ‘I’ve got one more episode of The Summer I Turned Pretty. Like, it would literally be impossible to sleep until I know who Belly ends up with, anyway.’
Will agreed one more episode, and she disappeared, Jordan thundering up the stairs after her with a giant turkey sandwich.
The fire was dying down again, and in the soft light from the corner lamp, the angles of Will’s face appeared grave.
‘We were together for our final two years. It was easy, convenient. We had made a few vague plans for beyond graduation. To be honest, I half-expected things to fizzle out. I wasn’t sure we loved each other enough to make the effort for long distance.’
‘Why did it need to be long distance?’
‘We were both looking for jobs wherever we could. The chances of that being in the same place weren’t high, given that she was dead set on working for Forestry England, and I was after a corporate graduate scheme.
Anyway…’ He paused to grab a few crisps out of a bowl left over from the party.
‘She got pregnant in our final term, so that was that. I forgot the grad scheme and accepted the first job I was offered, at Experion in Nottingham. She took on a couple of temp jobs until Jordan was born. We knew nobody here. All our friends were travelling, had stayed on in York or moved back in with their parents to save money. I found us a grotty flat in the city, swallowed my pride when Tilly’s parents kept buying us baby stuff, and when feeling particularly morose about everything, asked her to marry me.
‘Tilly had pictured our early years together as a sort of fuzzy montage of us being broke yet happy. Keeping romance alive with simple gestures that meant we took nothing for granted, relishing our time as a little family.’ He sighed.
‘There’s nothing romantic about not having enough money for basics.
Living in a borderline slum. In-laws looking down on you because you can’t afford a wedding ring, let alone a wedding.
Taking on a second job that means you’re barely home with your wife and baby, and when you are, you’re too tired to talk, let alone come up with the thoughtful gestures she keeps telling you she needs.
We nearly cracked apart a few times in those early days. ’
‘For what it’s worth, I know what it’s like to be poor,’ I said. ‘How debilitating it is to deal with, every single day. I’m sorry you had to endure that.’
He sighed. ‘Things got better. Slowly. Once Jordan qualified for a free nursery place so Tilly could get a part-time job, she started to make friends, find herself again. I got promoted and could drop the evening bar work. We had our first holiday, and it was so good to laugh together. Then she got pregnant with Edith at the same time she inherited a lump sum from her grandma, so we bit the bullet and moved into this wreck.’
‘Wreck?’ I took a sip of wine, eyeing up the beautiful fireplace, open beams, solid wooden floor.
‘It was at the time. Tilly worked two days a week, and still somehow managed to transform a run-down hovel into this while looking after two small children on the other days.’
‘Sounds like an amazing woman.’
‘She was.’ He paused. ‘She also started an affair with one of the school dads when Edith was four.’
I sat back, not sure whether to show how stunned I felt. The image I’d created of Will’s perfect family being destroyed by cancer evaporated.
‘So, when you asked about how much I missed her, the answer is not as much as you’d think.
I miss my family. I miss my children having their mother.
Someone to share the everyday parenting stuff with.
’ He grimaced. ‘Cuddle Edith when she’s sobbing about the boy she likes, or persuade Jordan to share even one iota of how he’s really feeling.
I miss someone else to notice if we’re out of toilet paper or help Bonnie make her World Book Day costume.
To sit and have a glass of wine with and decompress after a full-on day. Not that we ever did that,’ he added.
‘She didn’t leave you, though?’ I asked. ‘I got the impression you were together when she was ill.’
‘Things weren’t great between us. I’d started to apply for other jobs, hoping it would help if I wasn’t working so hard, but when I found her throwing up one morning, she confessed she was six weeks pregnant. We’d not had sex in twice that long.’
‘Bonnie?’
He nodded. ‘She needed to stay here with the kids, so I found a flat to rent and they became an official couple, although thank goodness he never moved in. When Bonnie was eight months old, Tilly got diagnosed and, for reasons she never told me, they broke up not long afterwards. I came home a few days later.’
‘Will, that’s incredible, showing that level of forgiveness.’
He shrugged. ‘I had to show it, even if a lot of the time I didn’t feel anything close to forgiveness.
The kids were going to lose their mum. They needed me here, and I wasn’t about to let the woman I’d loved go through that alone.
I was hardly blameless. She’d spent ten years waiting for her exhausted, irritable husk of a husband to come home from work. ’
‘Does Bonnie see her biological father?’
Will shook his head. ‘He showed up the day after Bonnie’s first birthday with a stuffed rabbit and a half-hearted promise about doing the right thing.
I told him his daughter needed him to do the right thing months ago.
The right thing now was to either commit or leave us alone.
Bear in mind I was grieving, while caring for three bereft children.
Before she died, Tilly confessed she’d put my name on the birth certificate, almost as if she’d sensed she was going to need me.
She’d realised this man was already drifting and if anything happened to her, she wanted the children together, with a father who could cope.
The waster sent a present the next Christmas and that’s the last we’ve heard of him. ’
‘Does Bonnie know about him?’ I wouldn’t ask whether she knew Will wasn’t her real father. He was clearly her ‘real’ father in every way that mattered.
‘Jordan and Edith can remember he was their mum’s boyfriend when Bonnie was born.
All the stuff I read said it was better if she’d always known, rather than drop a bombshell on her later, so yeah, she knows she used to have a different daddy, but she’s not interested.
Obviously, I wonder if that contributes to the Mummy obsession.
But I can’t change what happened, only deal with whatever comes up at the time. ’
I finished the last of my wine, my head fuzzy, heart aching alongside being utterly stunned at how I’d ended up in this man’s living room.
‘Wellington Huxley, you are an outstanding human being. I cannot believe you want to be friends with me.’
Will burst out laughing. ‘Oh, tell that to Edith. I’m a single dad with barely any friends, no hobbies and a business I can just about survive on thanks to my wife’s life insurance.
I can’t believe the world-renowned Fixer, winner of British TV’s official Rising Star award, would give a nobody like me the time of day. ’
‘Honestly? I don’t love famous people.’
Honestly? My dangerously tipsy mind blurted. I could end up loving this people. Person. Will.
I scuttled off to bed not long after that.
We’d chatted a bit more about lighter topics, but I felt so comfortable in Will’s company, I was starting to grow uncomfortable.
My increasing sense that this man was genuine, in all the best ways, was in direct conflict with my ingrained beliefs about people.
It had been a momentous day, and I needed some time thrashing about on the sofa bed while I tried to process all the thoughts jostling about inside my overstimulated brain.
After a few hours of restless sleep, I finally gave up and crept down to the kitchen at six-thirty, Ernest padding behind me. I was filling up the kettle when Bonnie hopped through the door.
‘Finally,’ she groaned, rubbing an eye still heavy with sleep. ‘I’ve been waiting ages for you to come down.’
‘What, two or even three whole minutes?’ I asked, with a grin.
She leant her head forwards, cupping her mouth with both hands as if about to share a secret. ‘I heard you flushing the toilet and it woke me up.’
‘Okay, so what do you do when you first wake up? Breakfast straightaway? School is closed because of the snow, so there’s no rush.’ I found a mug and a teabag as the kettle began to boil.
‘Um, well, usually I have a couple of biscuits or two and maybe some cake first.’
‘Do you indeed?’ I nodded as I poured my drink.
‘And then I watch Stranger Things while I’m eating it. With a hot chocolate.’
‘Stranger Things?’
‘Yes, and I’m not even scared.’
‘Right, so biscuits, cake, hot chocolate and a TV show full of nasty monsters coming right up.’ I had enough experience with small tricksters to not be fazed. ‘Oooh, is that your daddy I can hear coming down the stairs? Shall we see if he wants some cake before breakfast too?’
We decided that hot chocolate went far better with triangle toast and The Secret Life of Elephants instead.
It was almost eight before it grew light enough to assess the snow. Will had joined us and Bonnie had donned her coat and boots and been waiting for permission to go outside for a good twenty minutes, Ernest sitting beside her.
The garden was immersed in a crunchy blanket, the trees dotted along the garden wall glistening white like an old-fashioned Christmas card.
Bonnie and Ernest were soddened in seconds as they gambolled and tumbled about.
However, the hazy orange sun was revealing a clear sky, and I had every hope the snow would soon start to melt.
Will sent a message to the Friends Wanted chat asking if anyone had heard what the roads were like, and Merry replied saying that while the area around the central square was just about passable, her neighbour, a local police officer, had warned her that beyond the village, it was treacherous.
They’d already hauled a car out of a ditch, had a van slide into a stone wall and an elderly woman slip and break her leg.
As much as I’d enjoyed my time in Will’s cottage, my heart sank. I needed a change of clothes, space to decompress and most of all to not feel as if I was imposing on this family.
‘Has this completely derailed your plans?’ Will asked, watching his daughter scooping snow into a pile.
In more ways than I could begin to decipher right then. Instead, I summoned up a smile.
‘I’m a pretty planless woman these days. I think I’ll wander over to Tucker’s and discover what’s lurking beneath that manky linoleum and ugly wallpaper. See what redesign we can come up with on Merry’s non-existent budget. How about you? Were you supposed to be working today?’
Will sighed. ‘December is my busiest month for orders. But I can’t leave Bonnie alone while I’m in the studio.’
‘Would the others keep an eye on her?’
‘They’ve both arranged to go sledging with their friends, and I won’t make them miss out on the Snow Day fun because I’m a self-employed single Dad.’
I would have offered to look after Bonnie.
I probably should have, given Will’s kindness in letting me stay.
But it was too much. Despite the fresh air wafting in through the open door, this whole situation, the idyllic family scene, how I seemed to fit into it so naturally, was constricting my ribs, making it hard to breathe.
‘Maybe… maybe someone else from school might watch her for a bit. Or one of the Friends?’
Will smiled. ‘Maybe. Or maybe the whole point of becoming self-employed was so I can choose making memories with my kids over a pile of work orders.’
‘Daddy!’ Bonnie called. ‘I’m trying to make a snow elephant, but it won’t work and I need you to help me. Please.’
‘Okay, I’ll be there in one minute.’ Will turned to me. ‘Not tempted to help create Bigley’s first snow elephant?’
‘Not when I’ve strong-armed Merry into closing the café until I’ve fixed it.’
‘Good point. Bonnie would love it if you left Ernest here, though. If the roads have cleared by the time you’re finished, I can bring him with me when I drop off the Tucker’s decorations and then run you home.’
If the roads hadn’t cleared, I’d ask Merry if I could sleep at Tucker’s. Darya might loan me a clean pair of knickers.
‘After that breakfast, I think Ernest is hoping he can stay a lot longer.’ He’d much preferred leftover pigs in blankets instead of his usual kibble.
Will’s eyes sparked. A flash of silver and bronze. ‘He’d be more than welcome.’
I had to turn away and busy myself putting breakfast pots into the dishwasher.
‘Right. Thanks again, for the party, the wine, the bed, toothbrush, breakfast,’ I said, sounding like Alex Nixon, television presenter.
‘You forgot the second cup of tea.’
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound patronising. I have no idea about sleepover etiquette.’
‘Alex, you’ve met my kids. I’m delighted with not being grunted at, insulted or the butt of some sarcastic slang I don’t understand and almost certainly don’t want to.’
‘Right.’ I hovered by the door, still at a loss.
‘How about, “Bye, and I’ll let you know when I’m ready for you to pick me up”?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Okay, that.’
I was slipping and sliding as fast as I could down the street towards the café when my phone pinged.
Let me know if you need me to get anything to help make the decorations
I’d totally forgotten about agreeing to help the kids decorate tomorrow as well.
I stopped to lean against a gatepost while I replied.
It’s not too much, me coming over again? I’m happy to rearrange.
Three dots hovered on and off the screen while I waited. Just as I’d decided to start walking again, his message appeared.
Edith is itching to get the house decked out. But she can wait, if you need a couple of days to catch up on things. I know we’re a lot.
I took a deep breath. I’d promised myself a long time ago that I would be a woman who stuck to her word.
You are a lot.
A lot of fun, and interesting conversations, hilarious stories, kindness and joy. Which, when I think about it, is just the right amount. Please tell Edith I’m really looking forward to it.