The Half Sister(9)

‘Right, I’m off,’ he says, coming back into the living room with his car keys in his hand.

‘Why don’t you leave the car?’ braves Lauren. ‘Get a taxi. You’ve already had a couple of drinks.’

‘I didn’t know you were counting.’

‘I’m just saying . . .’

He leans over her, with one hand on the arm of the sofa and the other behind her head. She instinctively holds Jude tighter to her as she feels his hot breath on her face.

‘Why don’t you worry about women’s stuff and leave me to deal with the men’s?’ he whispers.

She could take the comment as an attempt by her husband to divvy up their responsibilities, albeit chauvinistically. Certainly a few years ago, that was all it would have meant. But things have changed, and Lauren knows that Simon’s words are loaded; specifically chosen to intimidate her.

‘I’m the man!’ she remembers him shouting eighteen months ago as he pinned her up against a wall, smashing his fist into the door beside her head. Her legs had threatened to give way as wood splintered around her. ‘I’m the provider,’ he’d gone on. ‘That’s my job – not your fucking father’s.’

She’d naively thought Simon would be happy that her dad had discreetly deposited five thousand pounds into their joint account. He’d obviously known they were struggling to make ends meet after Simon had been laid off work two months before. She, for one, had been grateful. It meant that she could do a food shop without worrying and not have to constantly justify the need to use the car instead of walking. But Simon hadn’t quite seen it like that, choosing instead to see it as Harry undermining his alpha-male status; wounding his fragile ego.

‘If I’d wanted your parents’ money, I would have asked for it,’ he’d yelled, his face turning a putrid shade of red. ‘But yet again, your father has seen fit to wield his almighty sense of self-worth.’

‘He’s only trying to help,’ Lauren had offered, desperate to diffuse the hostile situation she found herself in.

‘So you asked him?’ he’d said accusingly. ‘You went to your parents with your begging bowl?’ Bubbles of anger had formed on his lip and Lauren could see the vivid red marks on his knuckles as his arms flailed in fury.

‘No!’ she’d said, though it sounded more like a yelp. ‘I would never ask them for money.’

‘So, he just used his initiative, did he?’ Simon had sneered, his face still too close to hers. ‘He decided out of the goodness of his heart to help us, without you saying a word?’

Lauren had nodded feverishly. ‘Yes, yes. I swear I had no idea he would do that.’

Simon had hit the door with his open palm one more time before turning away. If the wall wasn’t there to support her, Lauren might well have fallen to the floor in a heap; drained of nervous energy.

‘It doesn’t have to be a bad thing,’ she’d chanced, after a minute or two of silence. ‘It will take the pressure off you – off us.’

Simon had laughed and shaken his head in apparent derision. ‘You think that’s why he did it?’

‘Well, yes,’ she’d said, confused. ‘Why else would he . . .?’

‘It’s not done to help us,’ he said. ‘It’s done with the sole intention of making me look stupid – making me look less of a man.’

‘But . . .’ started Lauren.

‘Don’t you see?’ he’d said, grabbing hold of her arms. She’d instinctively flinched, but something in his eyes had changed. They had a look of what she’d fallen in love with all those years ago.

‘This is what your dad does,’ he’d said softly. ‘He makes you think he’s doing you a favour, but it’s all about making himself feel superior.’

Was it? Lauren had thought about the man she’d grown up with and couldn’t help but wonder if Simon might be right. Was her father’s incessant need to help everyone that crossed his path, always keen to champion the underdog, a pretence? She certainly remembered a time when he’d pretended to help her.

‘You’re right,’ she’d said. ‘We’ll give it back – tell him we don’t need it.’

She’d hated herself for sounding so conciliatory, but she learnt that night that if that’s what she needed to do to keep the peace and create a happy home for her children, then so be it. It was a relatively small price to pay.

‘I won’t be too late,’ Simon says now, leaning in for a kiss. She can’t help but recoil at his ability to switch between Jekyll and Hyde in an instant.

‘Okay,’ she says quietly, suddenly desperate to get him out of the house.

As soon as she hears the front door close, her shoulders slump forwards, the pent-up nerves and tension flooding out. How had this happened? When had their marriage become so fraught with anxiety?

Lauren thinks back to when they first met eight years ago, at a bar close to King’s College Hospital, where Lauren worked on the labour ward. Simon was on a job in nearby Lordship Lane and was obviously the joker in his crowd. He was charming and made her laugh which, after years of dating self-obsessed numbnuts, was a breath of fresh air. He also happened to be in the right place at the right time, as with her thirtieth birthday behind her, the old biological clock was ticking loudly in her ears.