The Last Goodbye (10 page)

After Charlie had gone, I started work on the press release while Nat made some calls to a few of the photographers to discuss some more of the details.

“Thanks again for Saturday night, Nat. We really enjoyed ourselves.’ That pork was amazing.” I wasn’t lying – we had enjoyed ourselves even with Will’s arrogance. Although I still didn’t approve of her relationship with him, I was tolerating it for her sake.

“Yeah, it was fun.”

“Did Will stay long afterwards?”

“No, he was up with the lark.”

“But how does his wife not hear him come in?”

“They’re in separate rooms – you know that! She doesn’t know what time he gets in at – once he’s there when she gets up in the morning, she doesn’t notice. I hate when he has to leave me though, to go back to his family. It’s getting harder every time. Just for once I wish we could just wake up together in the morning without him running home at some godforsaken hour in the middle of the night.”

“It goes with the territory, I suppose.”

“I know, Kate, I’m just saying, that’s all.”

I knew it sounded bitchy and I felt contrite then. We were only just getting back on track again after our last argument about Will. I knew that I needed to leave my judgmental side out of it but I couldn’t just stand back and watch her get hurt. I could see that she was falling deeper and deeper for him. And the truth was that after watching them together the night before, I couldn’t blame her. He was so attentive towards her, it was easy to see why she had fallen for him. It was obvious that he idolised her and he was affectionate, kind and considerate. The only problem was that he was also married.

“But you don’t have to put up with half a relationship, Nat.”

“It’s not ‘half a relationship’ – it may not fit into a stereotypical box but that doesn’t make what we have together any different from other couples.”

“Come on, Nat, you just said yourself you’re getting fed up of sharing him with his family. It’s only normal to want more.”

“Well, he can’t leave his wife because of the kids and, as someone who grew up in a broken home, I have to say that I respect that.”

“Well, at least he’s not filling you full of lies.”

“He’s not like that, Kate. We get on so well. He always says that if only we had met at another time, things could have been so different.”

I’m sure he was full of lots of romantic nonsense when it suited him. Nat was a sucker for things like that.

“So you’re happy to settle for being the other woman then?”

“For the moment, yeah. I’m happy to just be with him and whatever comes with that I’m willing to accept. It’s part and parcel of loving someone, for better or for worse.”

I didn’t say it but they were the same vows that he once would have made to his wife.

Chapter 11

The following Saturday evening Ben had arranged to meet the boys for drinks – it was his mate Thom’s stag party so it was going to be a wild one. I had persuaded Nat to call over and we were going to order a take-out. I heard the buzzer just after seven. I buzzed her in but, when I opened the door, I saw she wasn’t alone. Another woman was standing beside her.

“Hi, Kate – this is Gill.”

“Hi, I hope you don’t mind me crashing on your evening like this?” Gill smiled weakly at me.

“No, not at all, come in.”

We all went inside and Nat and Gill sat onto the sofa while I rooted in the drawers for the take-out menu.

“You don’t mind if we have a glass, do you, love?” Nat asked me, holding up a bottle of Pinot Noir.

“No, not at all – we can’t all abstain.” I would have given my right arm for a glass of the red stuff. I knew I could have a small one if I really wanted to but then I’d just want more so it was better to have none at all. “I’m going to drink a small river though when this baby is born.”

“Bet you won’t,” said Gill.

“Eh, why not?”

“Women who are pregnant always say that but then when their little bundles arrive they are usually too in love to miss drink any more.”

“Hmmh, well, we’ll see.” I put two wineglasses and a corkscrew down on to the coffee table.

The others read the menu and then I ordered the food.

“Any word from Pete?” Nat said, turning to Gill while we were waiting on our food to arrive.

“No.” She sighed heavily.

“Who’s Pete? Your boyfriend?”

She nodded.

“Gill was let down at the last minute, weren’t you, darling?” Nat said.

“Yeah, he has to baby-sit his kids – his wife had to go to visit someone in hospital at the last minute.”

Ah, it was one of
those
‘friends’, one of Nat’s mistress friends. I had been wondering why I had never met her before. Gill was attractive, mid-thirties, well kept, trim figure – probably from not having had children yet, brown glossy hair, nice tan – probably from using sun beds. It was easy to see why a middle-aged married man going through a midlife crisis would be attracted to her.

“Well, you don’t
‘baby-sit’
your own kids,” I said.

Nat shot me a look. “Oh, you know what she means, Kate,” she said wearily.

“I’m just saying . . .”

Gill looked a bit scared of me so I said no more about it after that.

The food arrived and we all tucked in. I was dying to ask her why she put up with the limitations of being in a relationship with a married man but I knew Nat would probably kill me. Just like Nat she seemed ordinary – there was no obvious childhood traumas or apparent lack of self-worth – but I didn’t understand why two beautiful women would sell themselves so short.

The girls called a cab after eleven and I headed up to bed myself but I was woken up after four by Ben’s loud snoring. He always snored when he had been drinking. He had himself wrapped up in the duvet and I only had an inch to cover me. I yanked it back out of his arms and turned over again.

The next morning I opened the window to let the smell of stale air out of the room. I left Ben to sleep it off and went out and started cleaning up the flat. We were rapidly outgrowing it – there just wasn’t enough room for all our stuff. I was a regular in IKEA, snapping up all their latest storage gadgets but I now needed somewhere to store all the storage. What was it going to be like when Pip arrived? Everyone knew that babies came with contraptions and all sorts of bulky equipment.

Ben finally roused from his slumber after eleven. I was sitting with my feet up on the sofa flicking through a magazine.

“It’s awake! How was last night?” I said, putting the magazine down.

“Good, I feel rough,” he croaked. He sat down at the kitchen table. “Have we any painkillers?”

“Yeah, hang on a sec.” I got up and rooted around the presses and popped out two tablets for him with a glass of water. I sat down at the table beside him.

“Thanks. It must have been a dirty glass.”

“And nothing to do with the ten pints you sculled back of course.”

“Leave me alone, I’m dying.”

“Rate it on the scale.”

When we had first moved into the flat we had thrown a house-warming party involving Mediterranean quantities of red wine. We had been horribly hungover for days afterwards. It was full on – the shakes and reactions slower than the last hour of work on a Friday evening. We felt dire for three days straight. That party was our gold-standard scale for hangovers ever since – we now rated all of our hangovers against it.

“Eight point five.”

“Wow, that
is
bad. My poor Ben!” I said, stroking his head.

“
Ouch
, that hurts!”

I laughed.

“It’s not funny, Kate!”

“Oh, I don’t miss hangovers. That’s definitely one of the pluses to this pregnancy business.”

I made him a cup of strong coffee and then threw sausages, rashers and eggs into the frying pan to make a big fry-up breakfast. Normally Ben was so health-conscious that he wouldn’t touch a fried breakfast but today he was glad of the greasy salty food to feed his hangover.

“So how about we do some baby-shopping today then – cross a few more things off the list?”

“No, Kate, pleeeeease, not today! Any day but today!” he pleaded.

“Don’t worry, love, I’m only winding you up. I’m not that cruel.”

That afternoon, I persuaded Ben to take a water-taxi down the Thames to Greenwich. There was a gastro-pub there that we both loved and I had been dreaming about their sausages all morning from before I had even got out of bed. The sausages I had cooked for breakfast hadn’t killed my craving. The weather was hazy as if the clouds were just too lazy to fully move off and let the sun come through. We walked up past the Cutty Sark and along the pretty streets until we reached it. We went inside the dark interior and sat down on a comfy couch in the corner. I almost salivated over the menu even though I already knew what I was having before I even went in the door. We ordered a battered cod with mushy peas for Ben, bangers and mash for me, and Ben also asked for a bottle of beer. The pub was full of thirty-somethings like us, catching up with friends over a hearty lunch. Finally our food arrived and we both tucked in. A couple came in with their dog who lay down obediently at their feet.

“So have you thought any more about going back to Ireland?” Ben said for what seemed like the hundredth time over the last few weeks as he cut into his cod.

I could feel my tummy wind itself ever tighter into a knot whenever he mentioned it.

“Can you just leave it, please, Ben?”

“Kate, you have to face up to it – you can’t run away from it forever. When was the last time you even rang your dad?”

“A few months ago.”

“No, it wasn’t! It was Christmas Day, that’s when!”

“Really?” Even I was surprised. I thought back over the last few months. He was right. It was now June – I hadn’t rung home in over six months. I’d had a missed call from Dad a few months back but I had forgotten to ring him back. I felt a pang of guilt then. Dad was getting on – he had retired from the farm and my brother Patrick had taken it on. I knew he was disappointed when I hadn’t gone home for his sixtieth the year before. The rest of them were all there of course.

I pushed away my plate of half-eaten bangers and mash. My appetite was gone now.

“Are you not eating that?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“But you’ve been banging on about the bangers here all day!” He shrugged, then pulled the plate over towards him and started taking my uneaten food and piling it all onto his own plate.

We went home soon after and Ben went out for a run. Unlike me, his conscience always got the better of him whenever he pigged out. I was feeling sleepy so decided to climb into bed for a quick snooze. I seemed to be spending my whole life catching up on precious sleep these days.

I had just got comfy when the buzzer went a few minutes later. I groaned, assuming it was Ben after forgetting his keys. I got out of bed and went down to the kitchen and pressed the intercom.

When I heard Nat’s voice, I knew there was something wrong. She didn’t just drop in, she always called first.

“What’s wrong? Has something happened?” I said as I let her in.

Her whole body was shaking as she plonked herself down on the sofa.

“Have you got any alcohol?”

“Em, I only have wine . . . or hang on a minute . . .” I checked the press above the cooker. “Vodka?”

“Vodka.”

I poured a generous measure into a glass, mixed it with some orange juice from the fridge and handed it to her. She took a big sip and exhaled loudly.

“Are you going to tell me what’s happened?”

“I saw him with his family earlier in Hampstead Heath.”

“Who? Will?”

She nodded. “I was cycling along and there they were, having a picnic.”

“Well, you did know he was married,” I said, trying not to sound too harsh.

“Yeah, but it was different actually
seeing
them in real life. The three boys were running around on the grass in front of them – I recognised them from photos on his phone that he had shown me before. Oh, it was horrible – it only really hit me there how young they actually are, I mean Jacob has only just turned one!”

“Did he see you?”

“No, he didn’t. I thought I was going to fall off the bike in front of them though – my whole body just went weak but I got out of there as fast as I could.”

“I’m sorry, Nat.”

“Just seeing them like that – it was such a shock, y’know?”

I nodded but I didn’t know. I wasn’t the one having an affair with a married man.