Chapter Fifteen
Erin stood by the pedestrian gate at the top end of Greenwich Park, the yellow stone pillars topped with ornate gas lamps at her back.
She fiddled with the hem of the white blouse she’d teamed with black linen trousers.
She’d considered her outfit for longer than usual, keen to look her best, but not appear to have made too much effort.
Ordinarily, she wore jeans and a polo shirt with The Bookmark logo for work, and only swapped that out for a Breton T-shirt outside work in the summer, and a sweatshirt in the winter.
The last time she’d given an outfit this much thought was when she and Jack were invited to the Buckingham Palace garden party to celebrate him achieving his Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award.
She’d bought a floral dress for that, and spent the whole day sucking in her stomach and checking her cleavage wasn’t on show.
The dress had hung untouched at the back of her wardrobe ever since.
The day was bright, and she was glad she had an excuse to wear sunglasses.
She felt like she could scour the road and the heath beyond for Adam without looking like a desperate woman who’d been stood up.
A quick check of her watch told her he was already five minutes late.
Not a great start. She would wait until ten past, then go home, she decided.
He’d probably forgotten. She was an idiot for putting so much stock in this arrangement.
It was a stroll in the park not an episode of First Dates.
She smiled to herself as she imagined the ma?tre d’h?tel on the dating series, Fred Sirieix, greeting them both as they arrived at the rose garden, and leading them to a table set with silver cutlery glimmering in the June sunshine.
She caught the daydream in a mental butterfly net and threw it back out into the world.
This was not a first date in any way, shape, or form.
If she seriously thought it was, she would have declined.
She’d spent wakeful hours contemplating it last night and decided she definitely wasn’t in the market for a relationship.
Not that one was on offer. This was a chat, nothing more.
As she was reminding herself of that, she saw Adam approaching from across the road.
He was grinning and waving. She waved back and smiled, as her lurching stomach betrayed her.
He looked good in a cream knitted T-shirt with a collar and a zip which was partially open, showing a patch of salt and pepper chest hair.
It was smarter than his grey or black band T-shirts, and his jeans were less faded than the worn Levis he usually turned up in.
A baker-boy cap covered his hair and, with his dark glasses, she couldn’t help but think he looked like one of those older models you saw on posters above the tills in the men’s department at M&S.
‘Hiya,’ she said, as he reached her. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. Did they hug, kiss on the cheek?
He put a hand on her shoulder. It was heavy and warm. ‘I’m sorry I’m late. Have you been waiting long?’ He took his hand away.
‘No, not long.’ She turned towards the park. ‘Shall we?’ He followed her inside the gates and past the cars parked in the shade of the trees. ‘Haven’t seen you around for a while.’
‘No, it’s been … anyway, I’m glad I was missed at book group.
’ He shoved his hands in the front pockets of his jeans as he took long strides.
She could be imagining it, but he seemed a little nervous.
He was wearing white trainers in place of his chunky biker boots today.
It occurred to her he might have made the same level of effort she had.
She resisted the urge to say it was Mercy who told her to type that they were missing him.
Instead, she blurted, ‘Joe wasn’t happy about having to fly the flag for the men all on his own again.
’ Why did she say that? Joe had never expressed any thoughts about being the only man in book group.
He was happy in his own skin, and took people as he found them, regardless of gender or any other attribute.
‘I’ve missed the chat,’ he said, looking at her for a long moment. Did she imagine the inference that it was her he specifically missed speaking to? ‘I plan to be back next week, all being well.’
She noted the caveat and wondered again what kept him away. It felt impertinent to ask right away. She hoped he’d come to it soon enough.
‘What book did you ruin this week by reading the last page?’ There was amusement in his voice and when Erin glanced at him, his lips were pinched in a suppressed smile.
‘We didn’t ruin any books, actually.’
‘Okay, okay. Which did you pick?’
‘None, seriously, since you came in and shook things up with your questions, things haven’t run the way they usually do. Everyone brought in a book that relates to what they’re writing in their last pages, so we haven’t chosen one to read together.’
‘I take it you still haven’t forgiven me for shaking things up, then?’ He turned his head to her, and she wished she could see his eyes. His voice was light and gently teasing.
‘Hm, I’m working on it.’ She aimed for blithe and hoped it landed okay.
They were at the top of the hill with the Royal Observatory to their left.
The view ahead was awe-inspiring. They both stopped to take in the panorama of the London skyline beyond the Royal Naval College, to the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf glistening in the sunshine.
‘Forgive me for prying, but it’s been playing on my mind, why do you need to know the ending before you start a book? I still don’t really get it.’
Erin took a step down the path, trying to remember what she’d said to him when he first challenged her about this. ‘I like to know how things will turn out. It makes me feel … safer.’
‘So, you always need to know where things are heading?’ He walked by her side, keeping his eyes on the view. ‘Is there a reason for that?’
She glanced up at his face. ‘You really are a journalist through and through, aren’t you?’
He held out his arms and laughed. ‘I’m interested in people. You can’t blame me for that. People are endlessly fascinating.’
Erin smiled. From what her friends who were on the dating scene told her, most men their age were deeply incurious, much more inclined to talk about themselves than anyone else.
A couple of women who were recently divorced had held a competition to see whose date would go on longest before the man asked the woman a single question.
One claimed the whole date went by without the man inquiring about anything beyond what she wanted to drink, and then had the gall to act surprised when she didn’t accept the invitation to go home with him. ‘They are. And I have my reasons.’
‘Sorry,’ said Adam. ‘Forget I asked. I didn’t mean to overstep.’ His tone was serious and Erin felt him shift a little further away from her on the path.
She had the feeling she’d made a mistake.
She wanted the flirtatious tone back, and to feel his proximity, their arms almost touching as they walked side by side.
She took a deep breath and decided to tell him the truth.
‘No, it’s fine.’ She swallowed. ‘I thought I knew my ending, once upon a time, if you’ll pardon the cliché.
Then it all went wrong, and I never regained my trust in things working out, I suppose.
I need to know where something is going before I embark on it, or I don’t do it. The fear is too much for me.’
‘Fear?’
How lovely it must be to not understand the fear that rumbled inside her all day everyday, making her agonise over every decision she made. The energy she put into planning for what could go wrong, mitigating for every eventuality, was exhausting. ‘I suppose I’m an overthinker.’
‘Don’t feel you have to tell me, but—’
‘What derailed my happily ever after?’ She watched a very small boy tottering alongside a young man who was grinning down at the child.
The boy tripped and there was a brief hiatus before his wails rang out across the park.
The man scooped the boy up and held him close to his chest before examining his face, then kissing his wet cheeks.
Soon the boy was giggling at something the man said, and he set him down to resume his toddling amble across the grass.
Erin pointed at the pair. ‘I expected that would be Jack and Andrew. Andrew is Jack’s father.
We got together when we were at sixth form, and no one expected us to last through uni.
’ She laughed. ‘No one except us, anyway.’ She sighed.
‘We proved them wrong, and when we graduated we both moved back home and got jobs, and as soon as we could afford it, we got married and bought a house.’
She couldn’t help but smile when she remembered Andrew carrying her over the threshold of their home. Her smile faded when she thought about the years that followed. ‘We planned to start a family … but things didn’t quite go to plan.’
‘But Jack …?’
She thought of her gorgeous son and her heart filled with gratitude.
‘Yes, in the end the final round of IVF worked, thank God, and we got our little bundle of joy. But it was a brutal process and by the time Jack came along, I suppose the cracks were already there. I don’t know if I ignored them, or if I was too caught up in finally having it all, the happy ending I’d dreamed of.
Either way, when Jack was still a tiny baby, Andrew told me he didn’t want any of it anymore.
Not me, not the house, not even his beautiful baby boy.
’ She sniffed back the tears that threatened.
‘So, you see, I thought I had my story’s perfect ending.
We’d overcome adversity and were on track for our happy ever after, then boom, plot twist.’
‘That’s quite a plot twist,’ Adam said. ‘I can see why you were thrown.’
Thrown didn’t begin to describe it, but she didn’t need to tell him all the gory details. ‘And since then, I’ve avoided anything that might throw me a curveball. I like life to be calm and predictable. I like to know exactly where my life is heading.’
‘But surely you can’t account for everything?’
‘I can try.’ She lifted her face to the sun and closed her eyes, breathing in the smell of the grass until a teenage boy with a pimply face passed, breathing out the artificial scent of a fruity vape and spoiling it.
‘But life has so many variables. Other people for a start. You can’t control how other people behave, so you can’t truly manage how things will turn out.’
She was about to say that’s why she never had relationships, but she was oddly comfortable in this man’s presence, more comfortable than with any man since Andrew, so she said. ‘True, but I do my best.’ She was surprised to see a frown creasing his brow under his hat. ‘What’s up?’
‘I’m just thinking about you having to bring up your son on your own.’
She lifted her shoulders. ‘I didn’t plan it that way, and there was a time early on that I didn’t think I could do it, but we muddled through, and I think we did more than that in the end. We’ve done okay.’
‘He seems like a good lad.’
The praise blossomed in her chest. ‘He is. He’s the best. His dad’s missed out on so much by not being present. His loss.’ She wasn’t about to disclose the grim episode with the cannabis. That reflected badly on Jack as well as Andrew and she didn’t want to sully Adam’s opinion of her lovely boy.
‘Do they have any contact at all?’ Adam’s voice was serious.
‘Not really. Jack doesn’t think much of him, to be honest. At least, that’s what he tells me.
I used to worship Andrew, I thought he was the most gorgeous man on earth, but I don’t know what I ever saw in him now.
He hasn’t amounted to much. Whatever grand plan he had when he left us to regain this life of freedom he was so desperate for, it seemed to peter away pretty quickly.
He’s a middle-aged man with a paunch doing a boring office job somewhere in Hertfordshire. No more, no less.’
‘But …’ Adam licked his lips. ‘I suppose he had his reasons for not being around while Jack was growing up.’
Erin stopped. ‘Nothing that justified hurting his son.’
Adam scratched underneath his chin, the stubble making a rasping sound under his nails. ‘There are loads of reasons why fathers aren’t involved in their kids’ lives.’
Erin huffed. ‘You sound like you think it’s okay for a dad to simply bugger off if they decide the responsibility doesn’t suit them.
I mean, what about the women? Imagine if women took off at the first sign of trouble, like some men do.
’ She shook her head, knowing how rarely that would happen.
Nothing could have compelled her to leave her son.
She was besotted with him from the first moment she knew of his existence.
Even during those troublesome teenage years, she still loved him ferociously.
‘I’m not saying that.’ Adam rolled his shoulders, looking decidedly uncomfortable.
‘What are you saying?’ She blinked up at him. The sun was behind him, giving him a bright halo, but an unwelcome silent voice whispered to her that maybe Adam was no angel.
‘It’s just that individual circumstances should be taken into account when—’
‘Do you have children, Adam?’ Even as she asked it, she knew the answer could change everything. She held her breath.
Adam took off his cap and ran his hand over his cropped hair. ‘I have a grown-up son.’
A buzzing started in Erin’s ears. The next question would be make or break for them.
‘And were you involved in your son’s upbringing?
’ She read the answer in the grimace on his face.
‘I’m going to go,’ she said, unwilling to let him see the disappointment engulfing her.
Meeting him today had been a mistake. She should have listened to her instincts.
She turned to walk back up the hill, feeling like a fool for ever hoping it could have ended differently.