The Other Woman(61)

We offered each other weak smiles and hugged. I felt a million times better already.





29

By the time Adam appeared, Mum had reluctantly gone home. ‘Promise me you’ll be all right,’ she said on the doorstep. ‘I’ll stay if you want me to.’

‘I’ll be fine.’ I said. ‘I just need to make sure Adam is okay, and I’ll see you at the hotel tomorrow afternoon. You know what you need to bring, don’t you?’

She smiled. We’d been through it a hundred times. ‘I’ve got my list,’ she said, waving as she got into Dad’s car.

Adam looked broken, like a man who had been crushed into a thousand pieces. I so wanted to take his pain away, but I had to wait. I had to be patient. I couldn’t just steamroll in and say everything I’d told my mum. He was different. This was his mother we were talking about, and I had to be very careful how I played it.

‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ he said, as he sat at the dining table with his head in his hands.

I went and held him from behind, but he was rigid in my arms. ‘We’ll get through this,’ I said soothingly. ‘Once the wedding and honeymoon are over with, we can work out a plan.’

‘How can I go to Mauritius and lie on a beach, when Mum’s back here fighting for her life? It’s not right.’

‘But we don’t know what we’re dealing with yet,’ I said. ‘By the time we get home, we’ll have more information.’ I didn’t anticipate her being able to keep this cruel farce up for much longer than that.

‘Maybe so, but if it’s her first round of chemo on Monday, I want to be here for it,’ he said.

I could feel my chest tightening and willed myself to stay calm.

‘We’re getting married . . . tomorrow,’ I said, checking my watch. ‘Let’s deal with this one day at a time.’

‘Right now, I don’t even think the wedding can go ahead,’ he snapped. ‘It just doesn’t feel right to be celebrating, when Mum could be dying.’

I didn’t say a word. I just calmly walked away, leaving him to see the sense in what I was saying. When I got into the bedroom, I silently pummelled a pillow in frustration.

By the time he came in, I was dozing, but I came to as he slid into bed.

‘How are you feeling?’ I asked. ‘Better?’

He let out a heavy sigh. ‘I think we should postpone the wedding.’

I sat bolt upright, my head spinning. ‘What?’

He cleared his throat. ‘I don’t think we, I, can go ahead under the current circumstances. It’s such a huge shock, and I need time to think this through.’

‘Are you being serious?’

He nodded.

‘Honestly, for real?’ My voice was getting louder and going up an octave with every syllable.

‘It just doesn’t feel right, Em. Admit it. This is not an ideal situation to be getting married in. We don’t want our wedding to be a blur, do we?’

If he was looking for validation from me, he’d come to the wrong place.

‘Your mum has cancer.’ I put the c-word in inverted commas with my fingers.

‘What the fuck does that mean?’ He leapt up, naked except for his boxer shorts, and raked a hand through his hair. ‘She’s got cancer, Em. God!’

I looked at him, pacing the floor, and could literally feel the helplessness and rage emanating from him. He looked like a battery hen, cooped up with nowhere to go, nowhere to let off the steam that was building up within him. I could go some way to easing his troubles, at least, by lifting the lid on the pressure cooker he’d put himself in. I could tell him that I thought she was lying, knew she was lying. I could share my belief that she’d made it all up to stop the wedding. But that sounded so ridiculous. Who would do that? No normal, sane person could even imagine telling such a vile and wicked lie. I could tell him everything she’d done and said to me since we’d been together, how she’d moved mountains to split us up, undermined me at every turn, and had now resorted to this, her all-time low, in eight months of bitching and bullying. Would he believe me? Unlikely. Would he hate me? Most definitely. Would she have won? Undoubtedly.

No. There was nothing to be gained by telling him the truth, but I’d be darned if I was going to let her get her own way with her vicious lies. We were getting married, whether she liked it or not.

‘Calm down,’ I said, lifting myself off the bed and going to him.

‘Calm down? Calm down? I’m supposed to be getting married tomorrow, and my mother has cancer. How the hell do you expect me to calm down?’

‘We’re getting married tomorrow,’ I said, correcting him. ‘We’re in this together.’

I went to hold him, to put my arms around him, but his hand flew up, blocking me.

‘We’re not in this together at all,’ he snapped. ‘You’ve made no attempt to disguise your feelings for my mother, and, if the truth be known, you wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire, so let’s not pretend you actually care and that you’re feeling my pain.’

I stepped back. ‘You’re not being fair. Don’t make this about me. Your mother has gone out of her way to make me feel unwelcome from the day I met you, and I have tried so hard to get along with her, but do you know what, Adam? She’s made it impossible!’