You Can’t Fall in Love With Your Ex (Can You?) (34 page)

By
the time Gareth brought a massive dish of gooseberry crumble to the table, to
“Oooh”s of joy from the children, I was almost comatose with tiredness. At one
point I drooped so much that my hair ended up in my pudding bowl, and I
splattered cream on to my face when I jerked awake.

“You
lot carry on,” Sadie said. “I’m taking Laura up to bed.”

Gareth
said, “Come on then – who’s helping me wash up?”

To
my amazement, Darcey and Owen both leapt to their feet, Owen reaching up to
grab the crumble dish and almost tipping it over his head before Gareth rescued
it.

“You’re
in here, same as usual,” Sadie said, leading me upstairs to the room where I’d
always slept during school holidays when I was a teenager.

The
bed was covered with the familiar, faded patchwork quilt under which I’d tried,
misguidedly, sleeping with my pointe shoes on to improve the flexion in my
feet. My suitcase was propped open against a mahogany chest of drawers that
squatted in the corner of the room as if it had been there forever – probably
because it had. There was even a rosebud in a glass vase on the windowsill.

“I’m
going to run you a bath,” Sadie said. “It won’t take long, we’ve had a new
boiler fitted. Unpack your stuff, I’ll be right back.”

I
didn’t do as she said. I sat on the bed, too tired to think or move, until my
sister returned and practically manhandled me into a tub of scalding scented
water, then ten minutes later extracted me from it and took me back to my room.

“I’ve
left you a cup of chamomile tea,” she said. “Although frankly you’d sleep if it
was quadruple espresso. Gareth and I will put the kids to bed. Don’t worry
about anything. We’ll talk in the morning.”

I
said, “Thanks Sades. I love you.”

“Love
you,” she said, and even though she was already on her way out of the room, her
mind on the dogs or the kittens or her sourdough starter, I knew she meant it.

For
the next two days, I just let myself and the children be looked after. We went
for long walks in the sunshine. We ate mountains of Sadie’s wonderful cooking.
Darcey rode Bumble and Owen rode on the tractor with Gareth. Jonathan Facetimed
the children in the evenings, but didn’t seem to want to talk to me beyond
asking if I was all right, and telling me that he was.

When
it was time to go home, we had an extra passenger in the car: the smallest of
the kittens, a little biscuit-coloured ball of fluff who Darcey christened
Elsa.

The
drive to the Cotswolds, when I’d been frantic to get to Darcey, had seemed to
take an eternity. The drive back to London passed in no time at all, because I
was dreading what awaited me there.

Jonathan
had gone straight to the office from the airport, but he arrived home in time
to see the children, give them their baths and read them a story before
bedtime. It broke my heart to see their excitement at seeing their daddy again,
and Jonathan’s pleasure in doing the simple, everyday tasks of being a father.
The guilt I felt, knowing that our little family might be about to be
shattered, and it would be all my fault, was almost unbearable – I couldn’t
watch as he kissed them goodnight, knowing it might be the last time he did so
here, in this house we’d chosen together with so much excitement.

I
went downstairs, opened a bottle of wine and sat in the kitchen to wait for
Jonathan, the kitten purring on my lap. I’d made up my mind, at some point in
the course of one of those long country walks: I was going to tell him the
truth. However much it hurt, however much was at stake – I couldn’t lie to him
any longer. Whatever decision he made about our marriage, he needed to make
with the facts, not with the cowardly half-truths I’d told before.

“They’re
both asleep,” he said when he came to find me a few minutes later. “Out for the
count. It must be all the country air.”

“It
did them good, I think,” I said. “Apart from Darcey frightening the bloody life
out of everyone, they had a wonderful time.”

Jonathan
sat down opposite me. The kitten regarded him with one amber eye, then jumped
on to the table and padded over to him to say hello.

“She
shouldn’t be allowed on the table, should she?” I said.

“She’s
a cat,” Jonathan said. “She makes her own rules.”

He
waggled the end of his tie at her and she crouched, tail twitching, then
pounced and began savaging it viciously. We both laughed, and for the first
time since I’d left New York, we met each other’s eyes.

Jonathan
looked awful, I saw with shock. There were dark rings under his eyes and his
hands were trembling as he lifted his glass of wine and took a sip. His belt
was on a tighter hole than usual, and I wondered if he’d eaten at all, or
slept, the past few days.

“Shall
I make some food?” I said. “We haven’t got much in but there’s spaghetti, and
some jars of sauce somewhere I think.”

Jonathan
shook his head. “I’ll get something later. Laura, I don’t think I should stay
here tonight. I can stay at the flat in the City we use for clients – there’s
no one there this week. I think we both need some space.”

‘Space’
– that dreaded word that signals the beginning of the end of a relationship,
together with its ominous successor, ‘trial separation’.

“Okay,”
I said. My throat was so tight and dry I could barely get the word out. I
sipped my wine and tried again. “But before you go, I want to tell you about
what happened with Felix.”

“Go
on,” he said. His voice was hoarse and I knew he felt just the same way I did,
strangled with dread and sadness.

“I
didn’t just meet him a few months ago,” I said. “He was my boyfriend, when I
was dancing. My first proper boyfriend. And the thing is, you know how normally
when you break up with someone, when you’re really young, it kind of peters
out? You get sick of them, or you meet someone else you like more and realise
it’s too soon for you to be tied down. You start having rows, and they get
worse and worse, and in the end you’re miserable more than you’re happy, and
you call it quits. You know what it’s like.”

He
nodded. “I guess so.”

“That
didn’t happen with him and me. Everything was perfect, it was wonderful, and
then it was over. There wasn’t any in between bit. So I didn’t have the chance
to stop loving him then, and I don’t think I ever really did afterwards,
either.”

“Even
when you met me?”

I
looked down at the kitten, who was washing her whiskers with a tiny white paw.
“Even then. Even when I was so in love with you, part of me hadn’t let go of
him.”

“As
if he’d died,” Jonathan said, and I remembered him telling me years ago, when
we first got together, that his last girlfriend had been a widow, a girl called
Tash, whose husband had been killed in a motorcycle accident. Jonathan had
felt, he said, as if he could never live up to the memory of the man she’d loved
and lost, and that’s why their relationship didn’t work out.

“A
bit like that,” I said. “And, I know this sounds stupid and pretentious, but
there’s a saying that dancers die twice: once when they stop dancing, and then
again, obviously, when they actually die. So I was kind of mourning that, too,
because I’d never thought my career would end the way it did. And I thought,
when I met Felix again, that I could somehow get my old life back.”

“And
so you fucked him, and fucked up our marriage, and forgot all about our
children, because you were pissed off about not being a ballet dancer any more.
Jesus, Laura.” He shook his head. He was looking at me with utter contempt.

“Jonathan,
I didn’t. Please believe me. I’m not proud of what I did – I was unfaithful in
my heart, and that’s a terrible thing to have done. And I kissed him, and
that’s terrible too. And I didn’t tell you what was going on. But that was all.
I promise.”

“That’s
enough for me to be going on with,” Jonathan said. “What you’re telling me,
Laura, is that I’m not enough for you. Our marriage isn’t giving you what you
want. So, fine – I suggest you go off and get whatever it is you do want. And I
hope you know what that is, because I don’t.”

I
stared silently at the kitten, who’d fallen asleep on Darcey’s tablet, curled
up in a ball with her nose tucked under her tail. I felt blindsided by shock
and shame – put like that, what I’d done was unforgivable. Clearly Jonathan
wasn’t going to forgive me. The scene I’d imagined – me telling him the truth
about what had happened and saying I was sorry, him listening and understanding
and us moving forward, reunited and stronger, wasn’t going to happen. I
remembered Roddy’s advice from long ago: kiss and make up, then put it behind
you. It hadn’t worked with Felix then and it wasn’t working with Jonathan now.

Jonathan
had his mobile out and was tapping the screen.

“My
cab’s on its way,” he said. “Two minutes. Anything else you want to say to me
before I go?”

There
was – there was so much. That I was sorry. That I hadn’t wanted to hurt him.
And things I wanted desperately to ask, too – was this it? Was this the end of
our marriage? What should I tell the children? When would we see him again? But
the constriction in my throat had tightened so I couldn’t speak.

“We
both need time to think,” Jonathan said, less harshly. “Tell the kids I’m away
with work – God knows I have been often enough lately. They’ll hardly notice
I’m gone. And I’ll call you after the weekend and we’ll sort out what to do
next.”

I
nodded mutely. Jonathan’s phone buzzed and he said, “Cab’s here. Goodnight,
Laura.”

He
didn’t kiss me goodbye. He put his jacket on and left the room, and I heard the
wheels of his suitcase rattling over the wooden floor, then the slam of the
front door. He hadn’t even unpacked, I realised – he’d made up his mind to
leave before I’d said anything. He would have gone anyway. It felt so horribly
unfair that I started to cry, heaving sobs of guilt and self-pity. Felix hadn’t
listened to me when I told him the truth, all those years ago, and now Jonathan
wouldn’t believe me, either. Before I’d even been able to explain, he’d jumped
to the worst possible conclusion and decided what he was going to do about it.
He hadn’t even given me a chance to tell him I loved him. I might as well not
have talked to him at all.

The
kitten woke up and looked at me quizzically, then came over and sniffed my nose
with hers. A tear landed on it and she started away, sneezing. It was so
comical I started to giggle through my tears.

“Oh
Elsa,” I said. “I’m so glad you’re here, anyway, you daft little thing. What
are we going to do, though? What the hell are we going to do? I brought you
here under false pretences. You thought you were going to be a family cat and
now we aren’t a family any more.”

I
imagined what my future would be like. Saying goodbye to the children one night
a week and every other weekend. Seeing them go off to their Daddy, the hurt and
confusion they’d go through as they adjusted. They would adjust, of course – children
of divorced parents did, like Sadie and I had. And when Jonathan met someone
else – which he would do, really soon – they’d adjust to that too. They’d
probably even call her Mummy.

And
me? Would I be with Felix?

The
thought filled me with horror. I couldn’t be with Felix – not now, not any
more, not ever again. He could have been a dalliance, a brief flirtation with
my past, but I didn’t want that and neither did he. I was different now – I was
a mother with two children and a husband I’d loved and trusted until I’d fucked
it up by doing something that broke his trust in me. Felix had wanted to
recapture the romance we had when we were young. That was all I’d wanted too,
really. The whole thing had been an illusion, a game, a scene from a play. I
wanted Jonathan – I wanted my husband back, and now it was too late.

My
phone rang, startling me out of my reverie and making the kitten jump too.
Please, God, let that be Jonathan, I prayed. Let him have changed his mind and
be coming home again.

I
rummaged in my handbag and, of course, the second my fingers found the phone,
it stopped ringing. I checked my missed calls – Zé. She hardly ever rang me – she
texted or sent me messages on Facebook. There must be something wrong.

When
I called back, she answered straight away.

“Hi,
it’s me. Sorry I missed your —”

“Are
you back from New York?” she asked, without preamble.

“Yes,
we got back the other day. I’ve been staying with my sister. Is everything
okay?”

“Can
I come over?” she said. “I need to talk to someone.”

“Of
course,” I said. “I could do with some company too.”

“I’ll
be there in five.”

I
put another bottle of wine in the fridge. The way she sounded, we were going to
need it.

Her
appearance when I opened the door shocked me as much as Jonathan’s had done.
She was wearing a tracksuit and no make-up, and she looked pale, distressed and
much older. I could see she’d been crying, and when she saw me she started to
again, and so did I. I wrapped her in a hug, took her through to the kitchen
and poured drinks for both of us.