But she needed to see him. Everything was going wrong. Nothing could be right without him. She felt like she was failing all the people she loved.
She waited for him to come out of the office. She sat on a bench opposite the entrance to his office and waited. She arrived at 4:30 p.m. and sat there, hardly moving, not reading, just watching the faces of the people leaving the building until 6:00 p.m., when he came out and saw her sitting there. She stood up and hovered, and for a moment he hovered, too, as though he was deciding whether to walk away. After a long pause—and she was sure she could see the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed deeply—he took a slow step toward her and she sank down onto the bench again.
He sat down, but he left a big space between them and barricaded himself with his briefcase, and he didn’t look at her.
“How are you?”
“I’m rubbish.” He didn’t ask how she was.
He didn’t look good. His eyes were baggy.
“Andy . . . I . . .”
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was quite a shock when someone you were used to seeing look at you with love and fun and fondness in their eyes fixed you with a stare of hostility and rage. However much you believed you deserved it, and however much you expected it, it was still a shock, like jumping into water you knew was going to be really, really cold.
“I’m sorry.”
A small snort of derision. A narrowing of the eyes. Everything about his reaction demanded to know—is that it? Is that the best you can come up with?
“Look, Andy. I know it’s a stupid small word. I know it can’t fix things. I know it doesn’t make things go away. But don’t you see? It’s the only thing I can say. I can’t make it not have happened. I would. I would if I could. I can’t. I’m not sorry I told you. I had to do that. I’m sorry I ever did it. I’m sorry I was so stupid and so thoughtless and so selfish and so . . . so wrong. I’m sorry. I love you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What?”
“I don’t understand how the two things can exist alongside each other.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t understand how a person who loves me could have done it.” He didn’t look angry anymore, and he wasn’t looking at her anymore. He looked confused, and he was looking at the f loor between his feet.
“I mean, I’m sure it makes me sound naïve, and probably like an idiot. But you don’t do that to people you love. Maybe you do that if you don’t love someone, or you’ve fallen out of love with them, or you never loved them in the first place, or you say you love them, but you don’t really know what it means, or really mean it. I mean, I’m a grown man.
I’m a divorced grown man. I get some of that. But if you really do really actually love someone. Like you’re still in it, still in love, want to be with them, want to stay with them. If you love someone like that, I
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don’t understand why you would do a thing like that. It makes no sense to me.”
“It makes no sense to me, either.”
“But it must have. You did it, Lisa. You had sex with him, with this man, and then you got out of his bed, or his car, or wherever the hell you two were, and you came home to me, and you let me tell you I loved you, and you let me make love to you, and you said you’d marry me.”
“And I wish more than anything I’ve ever wished that I hadn’t done that.”
He smiled. “I don’t doubt that. But don’t you see? It isn’t that. It isn’t what you did. It’s what that means about how you feel about me.
That’s
what I can’t get past. That’s what I can’t get out of my head when I lie down at night. It isn’t an image of the two of you together. It isn’t all dark, possessive sexual jealousy like it is in films. That’s what you think it is. It’s probably what I’d have expected. But that isn’t what it is. It’s an image of the two of
us
together. You saying it, and not meaning it.
Not you lying. You not really, really meaning it.”
She didn’t speak for a minute. Then she shrugged. Tears were welling in both their eyes now.
“I don’t know how to fix it.”
“I don’t think you can.”
“Oh.”
He sniffed and pushed his thumbs into the corners of his eyes.
“This can’t be it.” She felt a sense of panic.
“I think this has to be it.” He stood up.
“I don’t want it to be.”
“Nor do I, Lisa.”
“Then don’t let it be.” She had to fight the urge to grab his legs, to physically stop him from walking away from her. For a second she thought she might scream.
He didn’t say another word.
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She watched him walk away, until the crowd of commuters absorbed him and she couldn’t see him anymore. She didn’t care where she was, or who might see her. She sat for a long, long time and cried.
Mark
Mark had been meeting his brother for lunch every few weeks for the last ten years, ever since Vince had moved into the area. It was the first time they’d lived in the same town since they’d been kids. Vince had gone to Durham to read veterinarian sciences the year after Mark had gone to Bath. They hadn’t been especially close as kids, or as young men, but after Mark had married Barbara and Vince had married Sophie, and Hannah and her cousin Bethany had been born, their relationship had had a renaissance. The safe, common ground of their families created the foundation of a new friendship, which they both valued. With both of their parents dead, this family bond meant more than ever.
Vince had been brilliant when Barbara was ill. He and Sophie had taken Hannah to their house, on many occasions. Sophie had delivered casseroles and disappeared with baskets of ironing. Vince had been great at those awkward silences people have when they are grieving. He hadn’t tried to fill them. He’d sat through them, just being there. And, more than once, he had held his brother, in an awkward, masculine embrace, when Mark cried, again not tempted to speak over the strangled, apologetic sobs.
Now, Mark sat across from him in the pub, nursing his second pint of the evening, and told him about Lisa moving back in. Then he told him about Jane. He had to tell someone. It had been weighing heavily on his mind for the last few weeks. Vince listened without interrupting, sipping now and then at his beer.
“I feel like a bastard,” Mark concluded.
“Why? It sounds like she wanted it as much as you did.”
“She wanted something. Just not sure it was the same thing I wanted.”
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“Which was?”
“Truthfully? I just wanted to have sex with someone other than myself. You’ve no idea how long it’s been. Actually, you probably know how long it’s been. Too bloody long. I’m sorry if that makes me some kind of animal, but I just wanted to have quick, good, silent sex and then get the hell out of there.”
“And you think that just because she’s a woman, she wanted a ‘relationship’? I’m no Germaine Greer, but isn’t that a bit of a sweeping gen-eralization?”
“Not just because she’s a woman. Because she’s that kind of a woman.
I spent the whole evening with her. She’s a . . . a nice woman.”
“And you’re not a nice bloke?”
“I thought I was, yeah. Until then.”
“For God’s sake, Mark. You
are
a nice bloke. Will you stop beating yourself up! As far as I can see, you two had dinner, you both fancied each other, you did ‘it.’ End of story. You’re both free. You’re both adults. You both did what you wanted to do. You’re going on about it like you slipped her Rohypnol, or whatever it is, and date-raped the woman.”
“So you think it’s okay?”
“Well, I’m not your mother. I’m not your moral compass. It shouldn’t matter what I think. But, yes, since you ask. I think it’s okay. I think it’s good, actually. And so does Soph. . . .”
“What do you mean, so does Soph,” Mark asked incredulously. “You told Soph?”
“Course I did. Needed the woman’s perspective, didn’t I, after what you said on the phone the other night?”
“She thinks it’s okay, too?” Irritation gave way to curiosity. Vince was right; the female perspective was all in this case. He’d have told Lisa, if he’d been brave enough. He had a nagging suspicion he knew what Barbara would have had to say about it, and it went something like—“about bloody time, you mopey git.”
Vince nodded and drained his pint.
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“Have another?”
“Please.” Vince raised his hand at the barman, who came over and refilled their glasses.
“She told me to ask you whether you were going to see her again. She said, if you said no, I was to say, ‘If not why not?’ ”
“Does she tell you everything to say?”
Vince nodded. “Pretty much. About this kind of thing. I need an official interpreter at home. Bethany’s so bloody touchy lately I have to have permission in triplicate to speak to her at all; I’m seriously thinking of putting a woodburner and an air mattress in my shed and moving in there. Until all the hormones have finished . . . surging . . . or whatever hormones do.”
Bethany was only a few months older than Hannah. She looked like Britney Spears. Mark had always been vaguely scared of her, even when she was a young child. As a teenager, she was positively terrifying. Hannah hadn’t had the chance to be a horrible adolescent. She’d been going through all that stuff while Barbara was ill. Barbara had made it to the first period, training bra stuff, thank God. Bethany had apparently jumped right over training bra into full-on vamp, with breasts that were hard to ignore. If Hannah had wanted to strop and throw fits, and argue and rebel, she’d suppressed it very well. There’d been one or two, during, and not much since. Until just lately. She certainly wasn’t Pollyanna. But it sounded like nothing compared with the ordeal Bethany was putting Vince and Sophie through.
He felt huge relief; talking to Vince about what had happened had helped already. He’d never mentioned the Jennifer stuff to him. What she’d told him that night. He didn’t ever want anyone else to know. It was bad enough there was now this situation with Amanda and Lisa and her. What a bloody mess. He wished Barbara had let the secret die with her. He just didn’t see that anything good could come from Amanda knowing the truth. Certainly none had so far.
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But this was different. This was his present, not the past.
“So—are you going to see her again?”
“I’ll have to—I left a sodding shirt there.” Vince sniggered. “Shut up!
And anyway, the girls are at school together. We’re bound to run into each other from time to time.”
He’d been avoiding her, of course. It wasn’t that difficult. He hadn’t made the call about the shirt yet. And she hadn’t chased him. He’d seen her car, at school, the day before. They’d both been picking up late.
He’d been slightly ashamed of himself for driving past without stopping, and parking in the next street. He hadn’t seen her, so maybe she hadn’t seen him. Still, it was cowardly. Like he said, they’d be bound to see each other—best to get the initial awkwardness over and done with.
“I don’t mean that. I mean are you going out again?”
“I don’t know.”
“Listen—if you like the woman, if she makes you feel good, what the hell’s wrong with it?”
“It feels disloyal.”
“That’s bollocks, mate, and you know it. I’m sorry, but it is. And that’s not Sophie talking—that’s all me. You can’t stay at home on your own forever. You can’t expect Hannah to be your surrogate wife. She’ll be gone before you know it.”
“I don’t treat her that way!” He was indignant.
“You don’t think you do, but you do. Look—it’s great that you two are so close, but she’s got to have her own life. God knows the poor kid had a tough enough ride when Barbara was alive. You don’t want her sitting at home with you for the next three years, do you, keeping you company? You shouldn’t want that for either of you. You’ve got to have your own life, too, Mark. You’ve got to get up from this at some point.”
“I have a life.”
“A life of mourning.”
“There’s no right or wrong time to stop mourning.” Mark felt cornered, ambushed. His tone was harsher than he’d expected it to be.
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“No, there isn’t. And don’t get mad at me. I’m trying to talk to you.
Of course there isn’t. Christ knows I’d be lost without Sophie. I’d rather cut my right arm off. We both know how much you loved Barbara, how much you miss her. Maybe you aren’t ready. Maybe you won’t
be
ready for another year, two years. I don’t know—I’m not an expert at this stuff. And that’s fair enough. But, this rubbish about being disloyal is just that—bloody rubbish. You don’t need me to tell you what Barbara would have to say about that, do you?”
“No.”
“So, all I’m saying to you is, don’t hide behind words like that. You like this woman, you have fun with her? Then you see her. Enjoy that.
For what it is. No one is going to think anything about it, except, if they’re bothering at all, that you deserve a bit of happiness. No one’s saying you have to marry her, hey?”
He sounded just like Hannah.
Amanda
The three sisters (
I’m only their half sister,
Amanda realized; it was a strange thought) sat at Jennifer’s kitchen table in a tense, awkward silence, waiting to see who would speak first. There was a big pot of tea, milk, sugar, and a plate of cakes on the table. It looks like some WI coffee morning, Lisa thought. It was never like this, Amanda realized. It was usually noisy, full of the cut and thrust of family life, the gibes, the inside jokes. This wasn’t funny, though.
Two phone conversations had brought them to this point.
Amanda had called Ed and told him what had happened.
“I’m coming home.” Was it home already? She’d already packed. She was great at packing.
“No, you’re not.” Ed was quiet for a moment.