Chapter Six
Daniel took a cold bottle of beer through to the living room and sank down into the plush white sofa. Today had been hard work. Spending all day showing Anna the ropes had forced him to concentrate on the things he did that he usually took for granted but, apart from one point where it looked as though she’d drifted off, he felt she was keen to learn. She certainly seemed to pick things up quickly enough, though only time would tell. On Friday he was doing a photo shoot for Vogue in a central London hotel — that would be the real test of whether they could work together. By the time he went back into the kitchen to make himself something to eat, he was feeling optimistic that this might work out after all.
After finishing the omelette he’d made and stacking the dishwasher, Daniel switched on his laptop to find some places to take Ben at the weekend. Beeston Castle was a current favourite — Ben was obsessed with knights and battles — and Daniel was delighted to find a medieval re-enactment was taking place at the weekend. He couldn’t keep the smile off his face as he booked the tickets. He knew it could never compete with Disneyland. Ben couldn’t stop talking about the rides and the wonderful characters he’d ‘met’, and while Daniel was pleased Ben had enjoyed himself, he just wished he didn’t feel he was in competition with Lucinda and Axel. He also hated that he only got to spend time with Ben every other weekend. Daniel sighed as he shut down his laptop. The saying that you only really appreciated something when you didn’t have it anymore definitely rang true. He often wondered if he could have done more to prevent it from happening, but thinking that way was a sure route to madness.
The truth was, Ben’s arrival in his and Lucinda’s life had changed everything. Daniel had met Lucinda when he’d gone to a weekend party on a country estate with Charlotte. Several other guests were invited, including Lucinda, who was part of that Cheshire set. At the time he was busy building up his photography career and didn’t have the time for a long-term relationship, and certainly not one at a distance, but on first meeting Lucinda he fell head over heels in love. The rest was out of his control. She had beautiful long dark hair, which rippled down her back in a glossy sheen. Her oval dark-brown eyes had stared at him intently, making him feel as if he was literally melting. She had exquisite bone structure too. His first instinct was that he wanted to kiss her, followed very closely by the desire to photograph her. And he did plenty of both. She was naturally photogenic and knew just how to pose in front of a camera to get the best results. Later she admitted that she’d always had a desire to become a model and had practised these poses in front of her bedroom mirror from when she was a little girl. She was delighted when his photographs launched her into a modelling career, and readily moved to London. For a while they were the golden couple, his blond good looks contrasting with her darker ones, and both of them successful and becoming rich in their own right. They ate out at the best restaurants, danced in the most expensive clubs and jetted off on luxury holidays whenever their schedules would allow.
Now, Daniel remembered those early days with a pang of regret. They were some of the best years of his life and he’d thought they’d never end, but of course they had.
Two years into their relationship, they’d married, at Peckforton Castle in Cheshire, surrounded by all their friends, family and countless hangers-on, followed by a honeymoon in Antigua. When they’d returned home they’d continued their life and careers as normal. Until one day, Lucinda announced that she wanted to stop modelling and become a mother. Daniel wasn’t keen. He didn’t want to give up the lifestyle he had for the responsibility of caring for a child, but when he saw how much it meant to Lucinda, he caved in to her wishes. He could never deny her anything and he was actually delighted when a few months later she announced she was pregnant. But that’s when everything changed. She suffered horrifically with morning sickness and mood swings, which lasted well into the pregnancy. Although he was sympathetic to what she was going through, and did everything he could to make it better for her, he didn’t really know what to do, and everything he tried always seemed to be wrong. He kept telling himself this was just a stage and things would change when Lucinda had the baby, and they did. For the worse. Caring for a newborn was completely out of both their comfort zones. They were exhausted, constantly snapping at each other, and Lucinda’s mood swings, if anything, were worse than before. Then she stopped caring for both herself and Ben.
Bewildered and inexperienced, Daniel tried to look after both of them. It was Charlotte who suggested Lucinda go to see a doctor, where she received a diagnosis and medication for postnatal depression. Gradually Lucinda started to improve and Daniel returned some of his attention back to his business, which suffered during her illness. He had to work hard to build it back up again, to fund the lifestyle they were used to and Lucinda didn’t want to live without. Over the next months she finally bonded with Ben. But, as if trying to overcompensate for those early days, she went completely the opposite way. She wouldn’t let Ben out of her sight and wouldn’t let anyone else in, including Daniel. He retreated to something he understood — photography — and worked as much as he could to overcome the feelings of being shut out.
Thinking back to those times, that was what Daniel regretted most of all. He should have persevered to be part of his wife’s and his child’s lives. Work had become a habit he’d found difficult to break, and Lucinda had been on her own most of the time with Ben. Daniel had been in such a state of denial that he’d been genuinely shocked when Lucinda announced she was leaving him. She’d hated being alone in London and had wanted to go back to Cheshire where she would be surrounded by family and friends. He’d understood why she would want to do that, but had known he couldn’t move with her. His career was here. He’d nearly lost it once and he wasn’t prepared to lose it again. And so he’d let her go. She hadn’t seemed bothered by that. In fact, she’d seemed relieved to be out of their marriage, and that had made him feel doubly rejected. But he’d never anticipated how much living so far away from Ben would affect him. His life was here, but his son was in Cheshire, and he couldn’t figure out how he could possibly combine the two.