The House On Willow Street (30 page)

D
id everyone in Avalon know, Tess wondered as she walked down the town to pick up a few groceries for dinner. Was everyone staring at her thinking,
Poor Tess, her husband has left her and found someone else
? Tess herself was never a person for gossip. It was partly her father. Dad had never been a gossiping sort of man. He’d quite happily walk into the village shop in the morning with scenes of wildness going on all around him and ignore it. Suki had once said that if half the town had been seen frantically kissing the other half of the town, he wouldn’t notice. He’d just go in and say, “Good morning, lovely day, isn’t it? I’m sure I saw a red kite out there this morning. Very unusual. Thought they were gone from Ireland. Terribly exciting!” And then he’d wander off with his newspaper, not even looking at the scenes of bacchanalian craziness around him.

Consequently, Tess worked on the theory that life could be difficult and that you never knew what was going on behind the curtains. She’d learned this partly from living in the big house all her young life, when outsiders would assume the Power family ate off the finest Sèvres china with silver
cutlery, when in fact they were all sitting around the kitchen table shivering like whippets in the cold, hungrily tucking into Anna Reilly’s Irish stew.

When they’d finally sold Avalon House and she’d come to live in the village in the beautiful little house she still lived in, she knew people were talking about her, but there was pity in their eyes when they looked at her because she was well liked. And there was pity in their eyes now. She was convinced of it whenever anyone looked at her.

Poor Tess Power, the last to know. Split up from her husband. And what was that story about a trial separation they both agreed on? That was clearly a ruse. No, Kevin must have left her and gone out and found himself a younger model.

The women would feel sad for her and the men . . . maybe the men would think that Kevin had got it right, trading in forty-something Tess for a younger model.

In the butcher’s she looked at various cuts of meat, knowing she really needed to choose the cheapest for Sunday lunch. Maybe lamb shanks, she thought. Cheap, and if they were cooked slowly enough, they fell off the bone and made a beautiful stew. Yes, lamb shanks, she thought.

“How are you, Tess?” said Joe the butcher, in his normal friendly tone.

“Fine,” said Tess, knowing she sounded brittle and wishing she didn’t.

“Great,” said Joe, “what can I do for you today?”

She gave him her order, all the time wondering what he thought or whether he knew.

In the cake shop, she bought some Rice Krispie slices for Kitty’s lunch. On Fridays the children were allowed to bring in something sweet, and Tess generally managed to bake something during the week. But she wasn’t able to
concentrate. Her mind kept flitting off whenever she thought about anything normal. Flitting off into the craziness of Kevin and Claire and what it all meant. What had she done? The whole thing was her fault. She’d let him go. And had he really loved her at all?

“Hello, Tess,” said the girl behind the counter in the cake shop.

Tess’s mind went blank. What was her name, what was her name? Erm . . . Sophie, yes, Sophie.

“Hello, Sophie,” she said gratefully. “I’ll have two of those Rice Krispie cakes and one French stick, please.”

It was dreadful to be buying those cakes when they were the easiest thing in the world to make, but she felt so tired at night, so weary. And once dinner was over and washed up, she only had the energy to sit blankly in front of the TV and look at it, not really taking anything in. Staring into the middle distance. She was doing her best for the children. When she was with them you wouldn’t think there was anything wrong, you wouldn’t think that her life had been ripped apart. No, Tess Power would not let her beloved children down. And no matter what people were talking about, she would show the stern Power backbone.

“Thank you, Sophie,” she said with a bright smile.

Let people talk: they would see that she was well able for anything the world threw at her. Groceries bought, she turned and headed back up the town, toward the shop. She saw Danae on the way and waved hello at her. That was the nice thing about people like Danae. They weren’t garrulous. Wouldn’t offer an opinion. Wouldn’t say anything. Danae, Tess decided, was probably the only person in the entire town who you could sit and have a cup of tea with and she’d never ask a single personal question or offer a personal detail in return. But then, Tess thought, Danae had always struck her
as a lonely figure, someone on the outskirts, not quite a part of Avalon. No, it was easier to be talked about and live in the town like a normal person, even if your husband had run off with a twenty-nine-year-old illustrator. Easier to do that than live in the half-life of loneliness.

Vivienne had been minding the shop for the half hour while Tess was out buying dinner.

“Someone came in and was very interested in that little round table with the darker inlay,” said Vivienne excitedly. “I told her you’d be back in half an hour. She said she’d come back.”

“Oh Lord,” said Tess. “They often say that, but they don’t mean it.” She was quite used to people coming in, examining things, promising on their mother’s life they’d be back in half an hour when they got the money from the cash machine, and then never appearing again.

“No, she looked like she really meant it—and I can tell,” said Vivienne. “Hasn’t been a bad day at all, you know. You sold those teacups and I sold four,
four
of those new skirts I got in, so it’s been a good day.”

Yes, thought Tess. It’s been a good day. Let’s concentrate on the positive and not mention Claire or wonder if everyone in town knows that Kevin’s now in love with her. She knew all too well that once Vivienne got started on the subject of Kevin and Claire, there was no stopping her.

Vivienne had very firm views on how she should treat Claire.

“Ignore her,” she’d said, when Tess had broken the news to her. “You shouldn’t meet her. She’s beneath you. She’s a child.”

“She’s twenty-nine,” said Tess, finding herself in the odd position of defending Claire. “And she’s not a child. When I was her age, I had a child and was married,” she added.

“You should steal him back, give her a taste of her own medicine,” said Vivienne heatedly.

Again Tess had to intervene. “She didn’t steal him, Vivienne,” she said tiredly. “He was . . .” She paused; she wasn’t sure exactly what Kevin had been during the trial separation. Was he like a library book in the recently returned slot, which was where everyone in the library seemed to go first, as though the fact other people had chosen them somehow made the books more interesting. Kevin had been in the recently returned slot and Claire had picked him up. Tess really had nobody to blame but herself.

“I know what you should do,” pronounced Vivienne, “you should start dating that gorgeous Cashel hunk. That’d make Kevin jealous. Actually, forget making Kevin jealous: go off and date Cashel. I would.”

“I told you,” Tess said, “Cashel and I have history, there’s as much chance of him dating me as him dating the man in the moon or the woman in the moon, whatever in the moon.”

No, Tess thought, best not to get Vivienne started on that subject. “Thanks for minding the shop,” she said brightly. “I’d better put my shopping away and get ready for when Miss Small Round Table turns up.”

“Great,” said Vivienne, and marched back into her own shop.

Alone, Tess thought how much easier it was to be angry than sad. If she let herself be sad, she fell apart. Anger was far more productive. Anger had got her through telling Kitty the news.

Kitty had taken it better than her brother.

“Does that mean that you aren’t married any more?” she asked. “Will you be getting a divorce?”

Tess knew that many of the children in her daughter’s
class had divorced parents, for which she was grateful, but she had never planned on being one of them.

“Not yet,” she said cheerily. “Daddy says Claire is a lovely person.”

She had no idea how she managed to say it without wincing but if it would spare her daughter distress, she could do anything.

Kitty put her small head to one side, considering. “I like having Daddy living here,” she said. “Can’t he move in here with Claire?”

“No, darling, he can’t. That’s not the way it works. He’ll live with Claire and it will be your second home, with another bedroom and everything.”

“Can I take Moo with me when I stay over?” Kitty asked.

Tess felt the anger flood through her at the prospect of another woman putting Kitty to bed and tucking Moo in beside her.

“Of course, darling,” she said.

“Okay,” said Kitty thoughtfully. “Is Claire pretty? As pretty as you, Mummy?”

Anger left to be replaced by love. “I don’t know,” Tess said, snuggling her daughter close, “but Daddy and I love you best, remember that. We will always love you best. That’s what mums and dads do.”

Tess and Kevin were communicating by text message. It seemed easier. Texting made Tess less likely to want to kill Kevin for his thoughtlessness in forcing her hand with Zach, who was behaving moodily, as if it was all his mother’s fault.

THEY WANT TO MEET CLAIRE,
Tess texted.
SHE’D FINALLY DECIDED IT WAS TIME.

I’D LOVE THAT,
wrote Kevin.

I WANT TO BE THERE,
Tess replied.

She didn’t really want to be there, but she did want to inspect this woman who was going to have access to her darling kids.

A date was set, and in a fit of brilliance, Tess decided that a neutral location would be best for the first meeting with Claire.

GOOD IDEA
texted Kevin back.

He’d have said “good idea” if she’d suggested a moon meeting, Tess thought with a flash of humor. So it was that she, Kitty and Zach were to meet Claire at the Avalon Hotel over Sunday lunch.

“Lunch is a good plan,” said Vivienne. “It’s a buffet in there and you’ll all be busy organizing food and such, that way you’ll get around the awkwardness of it.” She looked at Tess’s wry face.

“Okay,” Vivienne amended, “it won’t be
quite
as awkward. And it’ll save on cleaning bills too—less chance of you throwing a plate of food all over Kevin if you’re out than if you’re at home.”

Even Tess had to laugh at the image this conjured up.

Then Kevin phoned, sounding worryingly grave.

“I need to talk to you, Tess,” he said. “Face-to-face.”

“Fine,” she said wearily. “Come tonight. After dinner.”

Tess rapidly ran through the things he might have to say:
I want to move to Reno to get a quickie divorce so Claire and I can marry?
Divorce in Ireland was notoriously slow and took five years. Or would it be:
I want to bring Claire to live here too—we can all be happy, surely?

“Daddy, Daddy,” yelled Kitty, launching herself at him that evening.

“Hi, Dad,” said Zach, and stopped texting to bump fists with his father.

There was talk of how Kitty was doing in school, was
she sitting next to Tamara, who was mean and stole her pencils while Miss Stein did nothing about it. Then there was chat about the football with Zach until, finally, Tess shooed her children away, telling them that she and Dad needed to talk on their own.

As a great concession, she made tea and put the plainest biscuits they had on a tray without bothering to open them or even add a plate.

“So,” Tess said.

Kevin, sitting on the furthest seat, squirmed a bit.

“Well, it’s . . . it’s very difficult,” Kevin said. “I’m not really sure how to tell you this, and over the phone wasn’t the best way, that’s for sure.”

God, maybe he was broke. Maybe he
did
want to move to Reno and get the quickie divorce so he could marry Claire. Zach and Kitty would be devastated.

“What is it? Spit it out,” she said. “It can’t be anything worse than what’s gone before. Plus, I’ve got to get Kitty to bed in the next hour, and you know how hard that is.”

“Claire’s pregnant,” he blurted out.

There was a brief interlude where Tess thought that,
yes
, this was a difficult thing to say, and then the information went from her brain down to her solar plexus and she felt as if she’d been punched.

“Claire’s having a baby?” she said, and even as she said it she knew it sounded stupid. Claire was having a baby.

“Yes,” he said, sighing heavily. “It wasn’t planned or anything. She’s on the pill and she was sick one night and . . .”

“I don’t want to know the details,” Tess said. “Exactly how pregnant is she?”

“The doctor says eight weeks,” Kevin replied.

Tess was silent. Eight weeks. Eight weeks of the baby growing inside her husband’s new girlfriend’s womb, which
meant Kevin and Claire had been an item for a lot longer than he’d initially implied. Okay, she could be calm and deal with this.

“How are we going to tell them?” she said. “Zach’s already barely talking to me. He blames
me.
”