Four months before Catherine
Liv is here for the weekend, and it feels like a celebration.
She is godmother to both children – how could I have given her to one and not the other?
– and we spend the first hours of her visit around the kitchen table, drinking tea and inspecting the things she has brought.
She is an expert present buyer; she knows what the kids want before they know it themselves.
For Joe a vinyl record player – she waves away our concern: ‘It cost nothing, don’t panic’ – and several of her own perfectly chosen LPs, Scary Monsters , Parklife and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?
. It makes me wince a little to see those album covers on our kitchen table, to remember the impromptu parties from our past, fuelled on vodka and her infinite record collection.
For Daisy, there’s a trio of intensely coloured notebooks, turquoise, electric pink, and orange, and a glittery new pencil case tightly packed with felt tips, another spot-on present.
Daisy zips and unzips the pencil case for a few moments, examining the contents with a satisfied smile, then retires into a corner of the kitchen, lost to us for the rest of the night.
Her pleasure heartachingly simple.
Once the kids are in bed, we open Liv’s expensive Italian wine and skate across the safest topics.
Liv asks Sam about his job and he tells her funny stories about his new friends in the science department who to me are still a blur of names I struggle to remember.
I tell her about the local school, country mothers versus town ones (less make-up, dirtier cars), the three of us treading carefully to avoid all paths that might lead to you.
The next morning, Sam is taking the kids sailing.
‘Last sail of the year,’ he tells us, which brings an inadvertent stab of sorrow.
End of summer, official end to the season of you.
I’ve told Liv very little about our ending, just that it was over and you didn’t want to see me again.
Now, though, with the door closing behind my family and a fresh pot of coffee on the table between us, the moment for small talk has dissipated.
‘What happened?’ Liv asks.
Outside we can hear the car doors slamming, one, two, three, the engine starting up, the car sliding away.
Even now, when it no longer matters, when nothing matters, it’s hard to say the actual words.
There are whole seconds here and I’m clinging onto them, these last moments before Liv understands who I really am.
‘I told him the truth about why I left. I told him I slept with Jack.’
I keep my eyes on Liv’s face, watching for horror, but instead I find confusion and doubt.
She doesn’t believe I’m capable of such a thing.
‘How? How could that have happened? You wouldn’t do that, I know you wouldn’t.
’
I’m trying these days to own these feelings of shame, to conquer them, even.
I’m trying to admit – first to you, now to Liv and also to myself – that I once was a person who became so hopelessly drunk she committed an act of betrayal.
A person who slept with your best friend.
Someone who did the one thing you could never forgive.
‘We were drinking tequila, we were drunk. I was so out of it that most of the evening is a blur. Lucian went off to his uncle’s house, only I don’t remember him going.
’
‘Are you sure? Didn’t he tell you he was leaving?
’
‘I knew that he was worried about his uncle and I didn’t want him to drive.
I thought he was too drunk and I was scared he might have an accident.
The next thing I know, I’m in Lucian’s bed having sex with Jack.
I don’t know how we got there.
I don’t remember how it started.
To begin with I thought it was Lucian.
’
‘Hold on, this isn’t making sense.
You thought you were having sex with Lucian but it was Jack?
’
‘My memory of that night is so patchy, Liv. There’s so much I can’t remember.
But I do remember the sex.
I know it happened. I know it’s true.
I wish more than anything that it wasn’t.
I remember him doing things I didn’t want to do.
It was strange, almost as if he wanted me to think he was Lucian.
I should have stopped him but I didn’t.
I knew it was Jack and I just lay there and let him do what he wanted to do.
I’ve been so ashamed, Liv, so disgusted with myself.
I’ve hated myself, if only you knew how much.
’
I’m crying now, but from relief.
To tell this secret of mine, finally; to admit that my life has been scarred by shame.
Liv shifts her coffee cup aside as if it’s too much of a distraction.
She reaches across the table to take hold of my hand.
‘Tell me everything you can remember about that night. I think you’ve spent so many years blaming yourself for what happened, you might have lost sight of the truth. ’