The Dilemma(60)

‘You need to cut your cake, Mum,’ Josh says, breaking the moment.

Adam gives me a last kiss. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Nelson looks as if he needs rescuing from Rob.’

So does our daughter, I think bitterly.

Josh hands me a knife and, as I cut my cake, I realise that if I could rescue Marnie from Rob, I might be able to avoid a complete breakdown of the relationships within our group. If I could make her see sense, and she broke things off with Rob, nobody would ever need to know about their affair and we could carry on exactly as we were before. Well, not exactly as before, because it could never be the same. There would be this horrible secret between me, Marnie and Rob, and having to be polite to Rob so that no-one would guess how much I despise him would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible. But even worse is that I’d never be able to look at Marnie in quite the same way. And that breaks my heart.

Jess catches my eye and gives me a little wave. Rob is standing beside her, his arm around her waist, and I want to run over and beg her not to hate me, which she will when she finds out about him and Marnie. She’ll automatically blame Marnie because Rob will spin her a story to make him the innocent, and her the guilty party. He’ll carry on lying to her as he’s done all along. He’ll tell her that Marnie seduced him, that it was a moment of weakness on his part, that when she left for Hong Kong it was over as far as he was concerned – except that she wouldn’t let go and kept begging him to go and see her. And Jess, hoping to preserve her marriage, will choose to believe him. It’s why, whatever else she knows, I’ll never tell her about the baby. I’ll never tell her that Marnie was pregnant and that Rob asked her to have an abortion. That would be too much.

My biggest fear – and one that I can barely voice to myself – is that, if Rob does intend to leave Jess, and Marnie is coming home to support him through it, they’ll do it openly, not secretly. That instead of being discreet, they’ll flaunt their relationship in public. If they do that, it will be the ultimate insult. And how will Adam and I feel about them being a couple? Would we be able to have them round, watch as Rob kisses and hugs our daughter? If it was the only way we could see Marnie, what choice would we have? But it would kill any chance of rescuing my friendship with Jess.

The only way that any of us can escape what is to happen, I think bitterly, is if a massive thunderbolt were to come out of the sky and strike Rob dead. And that’s hardly going to happen.





1 A.M. – 2 A.M.





Adam


I haven’t been back to the party since seeing Cleo. I can’t, not yet. I’m in the bedroom, sitting on our bed, my mobile in my hand. There aren’t any missed calls. My messages for Marnie still haven’t been delivered. The only emails I’ve received are junk mail. There’s nothing on Livia’s phone either. When I left Cleo, I went straight to the utility room, leaving the light off as I took Liv’s phone out of the laundry basket. She had lots of messages and a few missed calls – but nothing from Marnie, and nothing from an unknown or withheld number.

Mimi is back in our bedroom, keeping her distance. Watching me from the corner of the room. I should call the emergency number, I’ve typed it into my phone. All I have to do is press ‘call’. But still I can’t.

I think about what Cleo said, about being called by the authorities if nobody has contacted them about a passenger on a crashed flight. Do they wait a certain amount of time before contacting the family? Did Marnie even have me down as her next of kin on her passport application form? Had she filled that part in? Maybe it wasn’t obligatory, maybe she forgot. Maybe she put Josh down rather than me or Livia, so that we wouldn’t be the first to know if anything happened to her.

The sound of people singing ‘Happy Birthday’ reminds me where I’m meant to be.

Taking the stairs two at a time, I race into the garden and reach Livia just in time. It all seems so unreal. But I’m with her, present, and despite the crushing pain of what might have happened to Marnie, I’m able to kiss Liv, tell her that I love her, be who she needs me to be.

‘Adam!’

I see Nelson waving and give Liv a last kiss. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Nelson looks as if he needs rescuing from Rob.’

‘Why are some people obsessed with bad news?’ Nelson grumbles, coming towards me, leaving Rob standing on his own. ‘He keeps going on about that plane crash this morning, the one in Cairo.’

I walk over to the wall, where Livia and I sat earlier, the one opposite Marnie’s fence. Marnie’s fence. It will always be known as that, I realise. Even when the photos have been taken down, it will still be Marnie’s fence.

Nelson sits down next to me, stretches his legs out.

‘You OK? You don’t seem to have drunk much.’

‘Migraine, that’s all.’

He turns to me. ‘Has something happened?’

I try to meet his eye but I can’t. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Just that you only get migraines when you’re stressed about something.’ He pauses. ‘You know you can tell me, don’t you?’

I wish more than anything that I could tell him. I wish I could tell him that Marnie was probably on the plane that crashed. I can’t bear it. If it’s true, how am I going to tell Livia that her daughter has died? What will she say when she realises that I let the party go on? She’s never going to forgive me.