They’d laugh at the possibility that he might be frightened of them. The family myth was the other way around. He was the formidable one. The disciplinarian. The curmudgeon. The trouble was, that shtick had worked when he’d been half of a double act – the tough cop to Daphne’s soft one. It had never been true, just how they’d managed it. It was one of a million reasons he’d been lost since she died. One of a million reasons he’d been faking it since she died. Willing them to notice. Which they seemed not to have done. Hoping they didn’t all at the same time. They were absorbed, God knew, in their own lives, and comfortable with the family myths. Scott had said to him, about three years after Daphne died, that he’d expected his father to marry again. To be married again already, in fact. Charlie remembered registering that, amazed that his son knew him so little. That, he could never, ever have done. She had been it, for him. Unforgettable. Irreplaceable.
It was only partly true, he knew, that this was about what he wanted. It was about them, too, and their families. Without Daphne as the link, he was further from them now than he had ever thought he would be. And yet close enough to see how much they still needed and missed their mother. Especially Nick. But Laura too. All was not well there. And Scott – he barely understood Scott, these days. He felt almost tearful, suddenly, at his own inadequacy, certain that if his wife had been there, she’d know exactly what to do, how to help, how to make things better. He should have paid more attention to the way she did it. Been less quick to hand her the phone whenever any of them rang. ‘I’ll get your mother.’ He wanted to be better with them than he was. Almost tearful was an all-too-frequent occurrence, these days. He hated not knowing what to do. But he was determined to try. For her.
2
The sound of the alarm shattered the peace. Laura reached out and felt around on the bedside table, smashing her target with the flat of her palm, more violently than was strictly necessary. She opened her eyes and turned her head on the pillow with a groan: the bright sunshine streaming in around the edges of the blackout blind was an assault. Seven thirty a.m. It wasn’t too early, unless you’d been tossing and turning until three, and only dropped off again near dawn so you didn’t wake refreshed, but from twenty thousand leagues under the murky sea of deep sleep. She lay still for a moment, waiting to remember all the stuff she’d managed to forget for a few hours, and taking her emotional temperature. Yep. Still alone. Still angry.
Laura couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t been angry. It felt to her as if her rage was part of her now. It was her best friend and her bitterest enemy. The strength in her spine and the tremble in her gut. It was rage that woke her every morning and powered her through her day, and the same rage deflated her like a balloon at night, sending her into a deep and instantaneous sleep from which it capriciously roused her at two, three or four o’clock. It started, with consciousness, deep in her core, and travelled, like pins and needles, to the tips of her fingers. It wasn’t a red mist: mist was too light, too permeable. It was a crimson blanket, and it smothered her daily. But without it she’d have had nothing at all.
She threw back the duvet and moved to sit on the edge of the bed, rubbing her eyes. She could see herself in the dressing-table mirror. Pasty legs beneath a scruffy nightshirt. Baggy, crêpy eyes. Wild hair. Christ. She registered the thought that she hadn’t heard Ethan moving about the house and almost shouted his name, then immediately remembered: he wasn’t there. He’d stayed with his father last night. Ouch. The little stab, the tiny sting. Every time. And he’d been doing it more and more lately …
She wasn’t supposed to make him feel bad about it. She honestly tried not to. She wasn’t even supposed to see it as a betrayal, but she did. In her heart, to her shame, she wanted him to reject Alex, to hate him for what he’d done, because he’d done it to both of them, not just to her.
Having an affair – cheating – he’d done to her and her alone. She was the one he’d made vows to. But the rest he’d done to them both. He’d shattered their family, altered for ever the shape of their lives.
And still Ethan wanted to go there. Why the hell wouldn’t he? A shiny new apartment. A happy father. A shiny new girlfriend, too, eager to impress him. Fewer rules. And no Laura.
It wasn’t fair. Alex simply hadn’t put in the effort. Whatever excuses he might make, however he might reinvent their history, he knew, she knew, and one day Ethan would recognize, he just hadn’t given it the time. He hadn’t thrown and caught a million tennis balls in the garden, or changed a thousand nappies, or sat for hours in the middle of the night in a steamy bathroom while Ethan had croup – a dozen times before he was three.
Downstairs in the kitchen, Laura made a large mug of tea, filling the cat’s bowl while it brewed. Not that the cat was anywhere to be seen. Perhaps he’d found his way to Alex’s new flat, too, forgetting who’d emptied his litter tray and filled his food bowl every day for the last eight years. She flicked on the radio, but found herself immediately irritated by the voices, and switched it off again. In the front hall, there was a small pile of envelopes. The post had gone from being quite boring (bills, pizza-delivery flyers, dental appointments) to being quite alarming: she and Alex did most of their communicating through lawyers now, while accountants and financial advisers, too, were getting in on the action of dissecting their lives. She didn’t open things straight away any more. She left official-looking letters until the evening, after she’d drunk a vodka and tonic.
This morning there was an envelope with her dad’s writing on it. That, she could risk opening with tea. She padded back to the kitchen table and opened it with her finger, pulling out the glossy brochure and the letter inside.
My darling girl,
I would love you three, along with your brothers and their families, to join me here for the first ten days of August this year: as you know, I reach the grand old age of eighty then, and I can’t think of a better way to celebrate than by having all of you around me. I know it would have made your mum happy.
I thought, when I last saw you, that a decent holiday would do you good, my love, and I hope you’ll come and let me spoil you.
Dad xox
Shit. Alex had moved out four months ago and she hadn’t told her dad yet. She hadn’t really told anyone. People knew, of course – that stuff filtered out and spread like wildfire. But she hadn’t said it to anyone except a couple of old mates and the cast of professionals poring over the detail of their lives. He’d left on Boxing Day, with a leather holdall, a cardboard box, and a new place already lined up. They’d limped through the pre-Christmas parties and events, together but not really. People didn’t notice, once they’d had a couple of glasses of mulled wine, that you’d arrived together but hadn’t spent one whole minute side by side until you left. Christmas Day had been torture. Long silences, too many vodkas and a turkey dinner it had been hard to swallow. After lunch, Ethan had begged to go to his girlfriend’s. Alex had told her then. Somewhere between the EastEnders episode and the Bond film. And then, of course, winter got quiet and dull and hibernate-y anyway. She’d seen her dad once, for lunch at a garden centre halfway between their homes. They’d eaten quiche, then wandered among the dead-looking February plants searching out hellebores for his borders, chatting about Ethan’s exams, the heavy rainfall of the last week and Jeremy Corbyn. And she hadn’t lied about her and Alex. She just hadn’t said anything because it was too hard. The note implied he’d noticed something was slightly off, but he hadn’t asked.