After the Honeymoon (40 page)

There was, too. Thanks to Corrywood’s half-term, there weren’t any classes at the hall, so he was able to take the kids to the London Eye, the Natural History Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. If Jack hadn’t been there, Winston would have bet his last penny that Alice would have whined her way round. But because she was so desperate to make a good impression in front of her boyfriend, it improved all the family dynamics.

‘You seem to have enjoyed yourselves,’ remarked Melissa with an obvious touch of jealousy when she got back from work.

‘We did,’ breathed Freddie. ‘It was cool.’

Jack, his face flushed, possibly from a day of hand-holding with Alice (it had seemed churlish to stop them), couldn’t stop talking. ‘There’s loads to do here,’ he enthused, laying the table for dinner without being asked. ‘Thanks so much for having me.’

See, Winston wanted to say to Melissa. Look how well-mannered my son is. Laying the table and saying thank you. Mind you, he couldn’t take any credit. Rosie had done a great job.

‘He seems very happy,’ he told Rosie during what was becoming a regular evening phone call to report on how Jack was. Even though Jack rang her too, Winston felt it might be nice for Rosie to get a full picture. Teenagers, he was beginning to learn, tended to speak in one-word sentences on the phone. ‘But how are you doing?’

There was a small sigh at the other end. ‘My father’s allowed me to go in and talk to him.’

Big of him, Winston wanted to say.

‘But he’s so unfriendly and cold.’ Rosie’s voice faltered and he felt sorry for her. ‘He keeps telling me that he’s managed fine without me so far and he doesn’t need anyone coming to see how he is now. It’s as though I left of my own accord rather than being kicked out. The trouble is that he really is quite ill. He’s got prostate cancer and it might have spread.’

‘That’s tough. I’m sorry.’ When Winston put down the phone, he was aware of Melissa watching him. ‘You two seem pretty pally,’ she remarked, taking a large slurp of red wine.

Winston shrugged. ‘As you’re always saying, it’s important to talk when you have a child.’

Melissa took another slurp, her eyes fixed on him. ‘I wonder how she managed without you before. By the way, Billy the Kid sends his regards.’

Winston stood up. It wasn’t like Melissa to be spiteful. Jack’s arrival seemed to have made her snappier.

‘Rosie’s happy for Jack to stay an extra couple of days,’ he added.

Melissa raised her immaculately groomed eyebrows. ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’

‘So I thought I’d drive Jack down to his mother’s on Monday after my class.’

‘Can’t he stay longer?’ Alice’s voice came from behind the door – she must have been listening.

‘Don’t be silly,’ snapped Melissa. ‘You’ve got school to go to and we’ve got work. He can’t be here on his own.’

Jack’s face appeared behind Alice’s. ‘Actually, I don’t really want to go back to Devon. I can make myself useful here. I can cook and I’m great at housework. I do a lot for my mum at home.’

Winston couldn’t help it. His chest was puffing up with pride. Melissa drained the wine bottle. ‘Looks like I don’t have much choice.’ Her eyes stared at him stonily. ‘You know, Winston,’ she said, softly but dangerously, ‘I sometimes wonder if you know how to be married.’

He had to wait until they had time alone before tackling her on her latest cruel comment. ‘What did you mean by that?’ he’d demanded when they’d gone to bed that night, each moving to their own far side of the bed.

‘You don’t know how to share things, Winston.’ Her voice rang out clearly in the dark, as if she’d been practising the words. ‘You’ve been on your own so long that you don’t realise that some decisions – such as having your son to stay – need to be taken together.’

‘But—’ he began.

There was the sound of her turning over. ‘I don’t want to talk about it now. I’m tired. Goodnight.’

Nor did she want to talk about it the next day, or the day after that. So much for sharing!

The following Monday, Winston waited until the kids had gone to school before telling Jack about the thing on his mind. ‘I’ve got to go somewhere after my class. Will you be all right on your own today?’

The boy nodded. ‘Sure. I can do some gardening if you want.’ He looked out of the window. ‘Looks like it needs a bit of tidying up.’

Great. Winston drove to his class so he could make a quick getaway. Luckily the traffic down to Devon wasn’t too bad and he was there by the middle of the afternoon. Don’t let Rosie be there, he told himself. And please don’t let Gemma (whose number he’d got from Jack) let on. ‘I don’t want anyone else to know,’ he’d explained when he’d rung to get the old man’s address.

As he turned into the road, he recognised the bungalow in its neat row of similar properties, each with their lace curtains and tidy gardens. Poor Rosie. He could imagine her all too well, as he rang the front doorbell, a terrified seventeen-year-old, leaving home with a baby inside her. Where had he been?

‘What do you want?’ The old man at the door scowled. ‘Can’t you read?’ He pointed to the sign with his walking stick. ‘
No cold callers
…’

Then his voice trailed away. ‘Hang on. You’re that bloke that used to be on the telly, aren’t you? The one that did those exercises. I used to watch you. Not that I could do them myself, mind you. You were good. Much better than that skinny kid they’ve got now.’

Winston cut in. ‘Actually, I’m a bit more than that. I’m your grandson’s father.’

The old man’s jaw dropped. ‘Yer what?’

‘It’s a long story.’ Winston held out his hand courteously. ‘How do you do, sir? We’ve never met before but I am aware that you’ve never approved of me. Perhaps we ought to start again. Mind if I come in?’

‘My husband and I divorced within a year. Sometimes you need to get married to know it won’t work.’

Anonymous

EMMA

Tom was ecstatic when Emma’s pregnancy was confirmed.

Ironically, he viewed ‘his’ honeymoon baby as a sign of his virility, strutting around with his chest puffed out with pride. ‘Shows we’ve still got it in us, doesn’t it?’ he announced to everyone, from the postman to his mates in the pub when they went for a Sunday lunch ‘celebratory’ drink.

Emma felt as though she was going to be sick, and not just from the usual morning nausea.

‘Mummy, Mummy.’ Gawain’s little face stared urgently up at hers as they all sat in the family area, along with Bernie and her husband, plus some mates of Tom’s from the garage. ‘What’s a honeymoon baby? Does it come from the moon?’ He frowned. ‘Cos Granny says babies come out of eggs.’

There was a burst of laughter followed by a round of clapping. ‘He’s a bright one, your lad,’ said Phil admiringly.

‘Me bright,’ repeated Gawain, beaming. The regression to baby talk didn’t show any sign of going away, Emma thought dejectedly.

‘Very bright,’ slurred Tom, on his fourth pint courtesy of his garage friends, who kept buying the rounds. ‘Takes after his dad.’ Then he added quickly, ‘And his mum too.’

Hah! Emma caught Bernie’s sympathetic eye. She hadn’t been particularly bright over Yannis, had she? Nervously, she took a sip of orange juice. If only she had stuck to nonalcoholic drinks in Greece …

‘Do you have any idea whose it is?’ hissed Bernie when they both went to the loo together, Emma leaving Willow in her mum’s arms. (They’d invited her along as last night’s date had been a particular disaster. The man in question had turned out to have an ‘understanding’ wife who ‘didn’t mind’ him seeing other women. Mum had soon told him where to get off.)

‘No,’ Emma admitted quietly. ‘I’ve already told you. It could be either of them.’

Bernie put down her packet of crisps to give her a quick comfort hug before anyone else came in. ‘Now don’t go all guilty on me and confess everything to Tom. Trust me. He wouldn’t understand. Don’t look like that, Emma. I know you’re not the deceitful sort, but …’

Emma broke away, talking furiously to her reflection in the mirror. ‘What I did in Greece was unforgivable.’

‘Don’t be so hard on yourself.’ Bernie was trying to make it better, bless her. ‘There were reasons, weren’t there? You had too much to drink.’ She looked ruefully at the glass of vodka and coke in her own hand which she’d brought into the Ladies with her. ‘It makes you do things you shouldn’t.’

It certainly did.

‘Want my advice?’ Bernie’s voice turned bright and sunny, suggesting this mess could be solved after all. ‘Forget about it.
Pretend
it’s Tom’s. After all, from what you’ve told me, there’s a fifty-fifty chance it might be his after all. Believe me, you won’t be the first not to know for certain. And you won’t be the last.’

At that point, one of the other garage wives came into the Ladies, causing Bernie to stop suddenly. ‘You’ve been in here ages. OK, are you?’ She gave Emma a sympathetic look. ‘I had the sickness real bad with my fourth.’

Four? ‘How on earth does she manage?’ whispered Emma to Bernie as they went back to their table.

‘She doesn’t,’ Bernie hissed back. ‘Despite that parenting class they run at school.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Mum, her spirits only slightly mollified by her second glass of Chablis.

‘We were just talking kids,’ said Emma quickly, aware that the loo woman’s husband was sitting opposite, soothing a grizzling baby and trying to stop a snotty-nosed toddler from nabbing someone else’s crisps. ‘Anyone seen our Kerry?’ he kept saying, looking wildly around. ‘And Josh too? They were here a minute ago.’

Emma’s mother snorted. ‘On the slot machines by the Gents. If you don’t stop them, they’re going to smash that thing.’ She gave a meaningful glance at her daughter. ‘See what you’ve let yourself in for?’ she muttered. ‘I found it hard enough with just one.’

Bernie put an arm around her shoulder. ‘She’ll have us to help, won’t she? Now my two are older, I’ll have more time on my hands. We’ll all muck in. Whoops!’

Emma caught the glass just as Willow’s chubby little arm was about to knock it off the table. Mum was right. How
was
she going to cope? Not just because she’d have another little one to look after but because, despite Bernie’s reassurances, there was no way she could go through life not knowing if this baby was Tom’s or not.

She’d just have to find the right time – and courage – to tell her husband the truth.

Meanwhile, there was something else she needed to do. Something that had been preying on her mind, ever since they’d got back from Greece.

If he hadn’t put his address on the letter inside the wedding card, Emma wouldn’t have known where to have found him. She certainly couldn’t have asked Mum. The word ‘Dad’ wasn’t allowed any more.

But ever since she had been stupid enough to have gone with Yannis, Emma had begun to realise there were two sides to a story.

Yes, she had been drunk at the time. If she hadn’t, none of that stuff would have happened. But if she was being truthful, maybe she’d
allowed
herself to be seduced because she’d been cross with Tom on so many different levels. She’d felt railroaded into marriage for a start. He’d known perfectly well that she hadn’t particularly wanted to have a wedding but he’d pushed her.

Then there was the sickness thing. Tom could be a bit of a hypochondriac. Even at home, if he had a cold, he claimed it was flu. And he could have made a bit more of an effort on their honeymoon
after
he’d stopped being ill.

Did she need more excuses? Yes. Take the sun and all that sex going on around them. That’s right, Emma told herself. Sex. Might as well come clean about it. She’d felt as though she’d been missing out; something that Tom’s own pitiful performance at the end of the week had demonstrated.

Emma shivered, hating herself. Why had her body been more aroused by Yannis – a man she barely knew – than her own husband?

‘Some women find it exciting to make love to a stranger,’ Bernie had said soothingly when she’d confided in her. ‘Maybe it was a release, too, after all that pressure of the wedding.’

Possibly.

The whole thing had got her thinking about what Dad had said, when he’d left Mum. ‘It’s not just because of Trisha,’ he had declared, referring to his fancy woman from the office.

‘I don’t want to hear,’ she had retorted, cutting him off. But now, after all these years, maybe it was time for Emma to find out what he’d meant.

Should she have called to say she was coming? Emma had made the forty-minute drive from Corrywood and now she parked outside a tidy, semi-detached house and nervously smoothed her navy fleece jacket down over her bump.

No. Why should she give him time to make up an up-to-date defence? Emma needed to see her father face to face, to read what was behind it.

Dad worked nights. She knew that from Bernie’s dad, who worked at the same factory. So with any luck, she might just catch him in. She glanced at her watch. An hour. That was all she had. Then she needed to get back to collect Gawain from nursery and Willow from Mum’s. ‘I just need to get some more clothes now my waist is getting bigger,’ she’d fibbed when Mum had asked her where she was going.

Another lie. It was scary how they could grow.

Now, as she walked up the tidy stone path, she noticed the car in the drive – a very clean white Volvo with a newish registration. No shortage of money there, she noted, her lips tightening. Poor Mum was still struggling on benefits and the odd cleaning job. It wasn’t fair.

A figure was looming towards her through the glass door. Emma felt her heart in her throat. What if it was
her
? Trisha. She hadn’t thought about that. Her mouth went dry. If it was, she’d tell her exactly what she thought of a marriage breaker. She’d …

‘Emma!’ The older man standing in front of her was so much thinner than she remembered. His hair was tinged with grey. He was slightly stooped, too. Yet despite this, he was still a good-looking man for his age. That look of pure delight in his eyes took her sharply back to the time she’d learned to swim with his help. There was no disguising it. He was thrilled to see her.