‘How many Sunday lunches has Logan missed now?’ Alain asks as we round the corner to where I’ve parked the car. There was a time when I’d just park up outside their house and bound in, expecting him to join us a little later. And then when he wouldn’t get there for sometimes up to an hour and Mum and Dad would be looking at me like it was my fault, I decided to wait in the car. When they made it clear they’d seen me in the car and disapproved of that even more than sitting on the sofa waiting for him to appear, I started to park two streets away.
‘I don’t know. He hasn’t been for at least three months,’ I reply to Alain’s question.
‘Wow, he must be completely smitten with this new woman of his.’
‘I guess so.’
‘No hints about who she is?’
I shake my head. ‘No, none at all. Which is odd because after him and Henrietta broke up all those years ago, it was like he didn’t get to four dates with a girl before he was dragging her over to meet the future in-laws. This one, though, nothing, nada. He hasn’t even told us her name. Not even Bella who he tells everything to.’
We arrive at the car and he hugs and kisses me, then kisses and hugs Betina, before helping her climb into her seat in the back.
Once she is in and shut away so she can’t easily hear the rest of the conversation, he turns to me. ‘I really am sorry about being late again. I could try to excuse it but I suppose it all boils down to me being unbelievably crap. I’m sorry. I’m going to make sure I’m on time next week.’
‘OK,’ I reply, because what else am I going to say that will make a difference?
He sighs. ‘Same time next week?’
‘Actually, can you have Betina an extra night this week?’
‘Oh, any particular reason?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Any particular reason you want me to have her?’
‘Don’t you want to spend more time with your daughter?’
‘Of course I do, I absolutely do. I was just curious.’
‘Curious about if I’m sleeping with someone else?’
Alain glances over my shoulder as crimson shame creeps up his cheeks from his neck. ‘Yes, basically.’ He refocuses on me. ‘Are you?’
‘I have to work late. Not that it’s any of your business.’
‘It’s not my business but I do still love you so it kind of feels like my business when it totally isn’t.’
‘OK,’ I say.
We stand in the awkward silence of people who don’t know what to say to each other to end their meeting. ‘I’ll see you, then,’ I say and begin to move to the other side of the car.
He reaches out and stills me by putting his hand on my forearm.
‘I’m serious, you know, Pops. Nothing’s changed for me. You’re still the love of my life. Always will be. Just say the word, and I’ll do whatever it takes to come home.’
‘My flat isn’t your home, Alain.’
‘But where you and Betina are is my home, which is what I meant. And you know that’s what I meant.’
It’d be so much easier, simpler, if he’d cheated on me, or if he’d battered me emotionally, raised a hand to me physically; everything would be clear-cut and sorted then. We’d have set pick-up times for our daughter, we’d be able to tell our families we weren’t together and we’d be able to move on without a second thought for the other person’s plans. Joint Sunday lunches would be a distant memory because I wouldn’t be a forty-eight-year-old woman pretending to my parents that I can keep a relationship going.
When has anything been simple and easy in my life?
‘I’ll let you know when you can pick up Betina,’ I reply and quickly head for the driver’s side of the car before ‘I love you, too’ slips out of my lips. I do not want to say it. Feel it? Yes, of course. I love every part of Alain. But I don’t want to admit to it.
verity
Now
‘Do you remember that dress shop we went to in Uckfield when we were looking at wedding dresses?’ Mum asks. She’s driving me home despite me saying I’d get the bus down. She’d insisted because she wanted to spend more time with me. We’d spent most of the morning traipsing round shops and sitting having stupid coffee and cake, how much more time did she want to spend with me?
‘Yes, I remember that shop,’ I say to her.
I stare out of my window, the shapes and colours of Brighton moving past. I try to focus on them – the smudges of humanity, the sketches of nature, rather than the irritation that is clambering up through my whole being at being here with her a minute longer than necessary. I stare out of the window, also, so I don’t remind her that we were stopped by the police that day we went to that shop and the police officer was vile to us. Absolutely vile and she had laughed it off when I’d asked her. She’d laughed it off instead of confessing that it was because of her past.
‘I’m wondering if I should try over there for a dress,’ she says.
I roll my eyes while still staring out of the window.
‘What?’ Mum says.
‘Pardon?’
‘You just sighed, probably rolled your eyes. You don’t think that’s a good idea?’
I shrug. ‘Sure, yes, why not.’
‘Oh for . . . could you sound any less interested, Verity? Hmmm? I truly doubt it.’
‘I just think, Mum, that you should check with Dad first if he wants a party. And before you say, “you only turn fifty once”, just because something means something to you, doesn’t mean it’ll be as important to the other person. It’s just basic good manners.’
‘It’s meant to be a surprise party,’ she says, sounding utterly deflated.
Shards of guilt flutter like butterflies in my stomach. I shouldn’t be like this with her. And if I can’t stop it, I shouldn’t be around her. ‘Look, you know, it’s up to you what you do. You just asked my opinion and I gave it.’
‘You certainly did that,’ she replies. ‘You certainly did that.’
My mother lays a gentle hand on my forearm before I can open the door to escape. ‘Have I done something to hurt or upset you, Vee?’ she asks.
Yes, I want to say. Yes, you have. Your life is a lie. Our life is a lie. Everything I know about you is a lie.
‘What could you have possibly done to upset me?’ I ask.
She smiles to hide her smirk. ‘Ah well, if I didn’t realise I’d upset you before, I’m certain of it now,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. For whatever it is. I’m sorry.’
Whenever I stare at my mother, I know I am seeing a mirror to my future; watching her features as the barometer for how I’ll look in the coming years. Right now, I’m looking in the mirror to how I will look if I keep things from my family for years and years and years; how I would look if I was a murderer. ‘I won’t ask to come up,’ she says. ‘I’ll just see you soon.’
Embarrassed suddenly at my mother’s grace and patience in the face of my hideous behaviour – and it has been hideous – I want to say something. Anything that will let her know I’m sorry. That I love her. And that I wish she’d told me all that stuff before I found it out.