The Letters (Carnage #4)(25)

I watch him as he walks across the room to get the spare chair that’s sitting in the corner. He moves exactly like his dad. Long confident strides. He pushes the front of his dark hair back before lifting the chair with ease and putting it down next to mine. He picks up a Polaroid photo that I’d found amongst everything else. It was of a hot and sweaty Sean and Marley. Their guitar straps pulled tight across their chests, their guitars resting across their backs. They each have a beer in their hands and Marley’s arm is slung over Sean’s shoulders. They’d obviously just finished a show somewhere.

They look so young. Twenty at the most. So it was probably at a time that we weren’t together. I’d kept it out to give to Marley. I have a couple of photos of the pair of them in my office, and I even keep a photo of me and Sean in here. It was my favourite one of the two of us that was taken on my birthday. I’m around five or six months pregnant with Beau, Sean has his hand on my pregnant belly, my hand is on top of his. Both of us were looking down at our hands at the moment the image was captured.

I fail to blink back tears and swipe at them discreetly from under my eyes.

“Do you miss him?” Harry asks from beside me.

I take a deep breath while I think about how to word my answer.

Our kids are aware of the basics when it comes to the story of Sean and me.

There’s lots of information, some true, some complete bullshit, out there on the internet to be found, so we’ve raised them with a policy of, if they ask, we won’t lie, we’ll give them an answer that’s as age appropriate and as near to the truth as we can.

“Yeah, I miss him. He was my best friend as well as my husband. We grew up together. I’d known him since I was eleven years old.”

“How did you meet, at school?” Harry asks, still looking at the photo.

“No, Marley brought him to our house. He’d just moved to our area and been recruited by the band. It was the summer holidays. Jimmie and I were hanging upside down on the monkey bars when they walked up the garden at Nan and Pops old house.”

He turns his attention from the photo to my face as I talk. I wonder how much I should tell him. I wonder what’s appropriate for a fifteen-year-old having a conversation like this with his mum. Are there even guidelines for a conversation like this?

“Then what?”

“Marley told me to stop flashing my knickers.”

Harry laughs. “Sounds like Marls.”

I won’t mention that Sean asked me to show him my tits.

“And then what?”

I let out a long breath and decide to be totally honest with my son.

“I fell in love. I was eleven years old, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I loved him.”

His brown eyes, Cam’s eyes, look over my face.

“So how old was you when you met Dad?”

“Nineteen, almost twenty I think.”

“But he was still alive then, Maca?”

“Yeah, we split up when I was sixteen, got back together again when I was twenty …” I trail off. Would he ask?

“But you were with Dad then?”

Of course he asks, he is Cam’s son.

“We split up. Sean and I got back together, eventually got married, and were together for fifteen years before he was killed.”

“And then what? You got back with Dad? I never knew that. I thought you met Dad at his club in Sydney.”

I nod my head. “We met back up in Sydney. I was there to escape the press and the public on the first anniversary of Sean’s death. I had no clue your dad owned the club. We bumped into each other and started seeing each other when we got back to England. We’ve been together ever since.”

He picks the photo up and looks at it again.

“So, if he hadn’t died, you and Dad wouldn’t be together and my brother and sisters wouldn’t have been born.” It’s a statement, not a question. I don’t even attempt an answer.

“I don’t wanna be glad he died, Mum, because I’ve seen how upset you still get about things, but I’m glad you and Dad met and got back together.”

I have to wait a few seconds before I can speak, and even then, my voice wobbles.

“You don’t wish things had worked out differently with your …” I can’t call her his mum, she’s not his mum. I am.

“Tamara?” he offers up. I love this kid so bloody much.

He tilts his head to the side and smiles at me, knowing full well I’m struggling. “With Tamara?” I continue.

He shakes his head no. “If they’d have sorted their shi— Themselves out, then where would that leave you? What about the twins and George? Without Dad, they wouldn’t be who they are. They might not even exist.”

He’s expressing all of my own inner turmoils, and I’m kinda glad. It makes me feel like my thoughts are normal. It also makes me wonder about Cam and Chantelle. Before me, and even before Tamara, there was Chantelle, Cam’s first wife.

My stomach lurches. It’s as if H is reading my thoughts.

“Strange really, that Dad’s first wife died, then your husband, then Tamara killed herself, and you two end up together after both going through all of that.”

I nod my head, agreeing with him.

“Life’s strange sometimes, mate, that’s just the way it is. Sometimes it can be very wicked, too.”