The Family Remains(9)

Michael ordered himself a Margarita, Rachel a Dark ’n’ Stormy, and then they talked.

‘Do you have any kids?’ he asked her.

She started slightly. Being asked if she had kids felt as odd to her as being asked if she still had all her own teeth. Rachel still felt young, far too young to be viewed as a mother. But Michael wasn’t the first man to ask her this over the past year or two; somehow, without even noticing, she had crossed some invisible line into the ‘mother’ zone. She tried not to blanch at the question and said, ‘No, no. Not yet. How about you?’

She saw his face light up. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah. Just the one. A boy. Marco. He’s … well, he was born in 2006, so God, he must be about ten, I guess?’

‘You don’t sound very sure.’

‘It’s complicated. I haven’t seen him for a while.’

‘Divorced?’

‘Yes. Divorced. And my ex …’ He let out a puff of air that signified his ex was problematic. ‘Well, you know, it’s messy, it’s complicated, my ex knows where to find me, but she chooses not to. She has a chaotic life. I offered to support her, her and the boy. But she pretty much ghosted me. So yeah. It’s sad. Marco, my God if you saw him, just the most exquisitely beautiful boy. But living a life that isn’t going to end well.’

Rachel saw Michael’s eyes glaze with tears, and felt the encounter shift into another gear, a shift that seemed as if it might impinge on the unspoken promise of inevitable sex that had laced every moment of their previous communications, but might also take them somewhere else, somewhere completely unexpected, somewhere grown-up and real.

She put her hand out to cover his. He turned his hand over and curled his fingers around her palm.

‘It’s OK,’ he said, his eyes dry once more. ‘It’s just a shame, you know, the way life can take you away from the things that matter.’

‘Did you ever try to get custody?’

‘No,’ he replied, caressing her hand gently. ‘No. It was a quickie divorce; she didn’t want anything from me. I thought we’d work things out in the fullness of time. I saw Marco a lot at first. But then I went back to the US for a few weeks, on business, and when I returned to the south of France …’ He pulled his hand from hers and used it to describe a puff of smoke.

‘So, you live in the south of France?’

‘I live in a lot of places. But yeah, I have a house in Antibes. It’s pink. I have a pink house. You’d love it.’

‘What shade of pink? Not, like, hot pink?’

‘No. No. A very subtle pink – my ex used to say it was the colour of dead roses.’

‘Dead roses? Wow. That’s kind of bizarrely poetic.’

‘Yup, well, Lucy is a kind of bizarrely poetic woman.’

Lucy, Rachel thought. Lucy. That is the name of the woman. The woman who came before.





8




June 2019


Lucy turns the key in the lock of Henry’s front door, her breath held hard inside her as it always is when she returns. Not because she thinks anything bad will have happened, but because she knows that Henry would rather never hear the sound of her key in his lock ever again and that the very fact of her walking into his apartment, of resting her bag upon his table, of calling his name, of opening his fridge, of drawing and exhaling her breath within the area formed between the four walls that delineate his own, very private space, will cause him pain of the sort that will translate into a sharp comment, or a pedantic complaint, or just a brooding presence behind the door of his bedroom, a door that stays shut more and more frequently these days.

Stella is on a playdate at Freya G’s (they call her Freya G because her other best friend is also called Freya) and Marco is playing some kind of video game on the big plasma screen in the living room with his nice friend Alf. Lucy casts a nervous eye at the passageway that leads to the bedrooms, hoping that the sound is not carrying to Henry’s room.

‘Turn it down a tiny bit,’ she asks gently. Marco doesn’t glance up, but reaches for the remote and turns it down.

Alf turns round and smiles at Lucy. ‘Hi, Lucy,’ he says, ‘how are you?’

‘I’m fine,’ she says. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m good. I’m … Oh, shit—’ He’s gone, his attention back on the game on the screen, and Lucy goes to the kitchen and pours herself a glass of wine.

She wants to tell Henry about the amazing house in St Albans, but she knows he’ll take one look at the particulars and tell her that she is mad, that she is wrong, that she is about to make a huge mistake. He will tell her that it is a money pit, that she doesn’t understand property, that she will regret it. She doesn’t want to hear those things.

Before Henry has a chance to make her question her judgement or change her mind, Lucy emails the estate agent and makes an offer.

The following morning Lucy notices that Henry’s bedroom door is still closed at eight fifty when she gets home from dropping Stella at school. Normally he is just leaving for work at this time, sometimes she even crosses paths with him on the pavement outside the apartment block. She tiptoes down the hallway and very quietly pulls down the handle of his bedroom door, then pushes it fully ajar when she realises that there is no one in his room, that his bed is made, his blinds are open.