Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [122]
Patrick and Lucy
The children were asleep. She’d been on auto-pilot all afternoon and evening. They had come home, and she had listened to Bella reading Charlotte’s Web, tested her on her spellings, and helped Ed draw and colour in all the things that started with the letter S. She’d rinsed out their lunch-boxes, and put the juice cartons for tomorrow’s lunch into the fridge to cool. She’d made dippy eggs for tea, and laughed, as if for the first time, when they put their empty eggshells upside-down and pretended they hadn’t eaten them.
At bathtime, Lucy sat on the mat and watched them playing together, Bella patronising her little brother in a tone that aped her parents’ voices, and Ed’s mood deteriorating towards bed-time, as it always did, until he slipped beneath his duvet with Mr Ted shoved down the front of his pyjamas and a thumb between his lips.
Bella wanted to watch Coronation Street and sat belligerently on the top stair, wet hair dripping down her back, while her mother folded the bath towels, and collected all the plastic flotsam and jetsam from the bath. Lucy spoke to her more sharply than usual, and Bella stomped sulkily along the landing to her room, muttering under her breath.
Normally Lucy would have gone after her, cajoled her into a giggle, muttering back and offering to call ChildLine for her, and they would have been friends before Bella went to bed. Tonight it was more than she could bear, and she stared at Bella’s closed door helplessly, then turned and walked, heavy-footed, downstairs.
Patrick was late.
Now that she had made up her mind to tell him, she was suddenly frightened that Marianne had not kept her word. That, right now, she was pouring poison into his ear. She stared at herself in the hall mirror, at the woman she no longer truly recognised. Marianne might have been right when she had said that there weren’t people who would cheat and people who wouldn’t – that everyone had something inside themselves that they didn’t think about, understand or acknowledge. That everyone might.
But there were two different kinds of people: people who had and people who hadn’t. And she had.
In the kitchen, she wondered whether she should start dinner, then heard Patrick’s key in the lock.
She was gripping the sink when he came up behind her. Suddenly she had to get it out, but she couldn’t, wouldn’t turn round and tell his face.
‘I’m sorry, Patrick. I’ve been having an affair. With Alec.’
She heard him pull out a chair, scraping it over the tiled floor, and sit down at the table. He put down his keys. He breathed out slowly.
Lucy turned to him.
‘I know.’ As he spoke, his head nodded slowly.
‘Have you seen Marianne?’
‘No. She knows, too, does she? Poor old Marianne.’
‘How, then?’ Not Alec, surely. For a moment the thought was even exciting.
Patrick waved a hand impatiently. ‘Does it matter how? I saw you together.’
‘Where?’ It didn’t matter, but she couldn’t let it go. Maybe the minutiae was safer than the rest.
‘In the kitchen. The night we got back from holiday.’ Lucy’s face was blank. ‘You weren’t doing anything, but I could just tell. It was like something fell into place. How do they say it? The scales fell from my eyes, or something… It was just, I don’t know, obvious all of a sudden.’
His eyes sought hers. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’
‘I’d ended it before we left.’
Patrick laughed. An ugly sound. ‘And I brought him back to you.’
‘Patrick…’
‘Is it over?’
Lucy hesitated. She didn’t know. Her fists were clenched. She could feel her fingernails digging into her palms. She had to stop this now. Enough. ‘I don’t know. But I don’t want it to be.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I love him, Patrick.’
‘And you don’t love me?’
‘Not in the same way.’
‘Here we go. The I-love-you-but-I’m-not-in-love-with-you conversation. How incredibly original, Lucy.’
There was a reason for that, Lucy thought. That’s how it is sometimes for people like me. That’s why they all say it. Because it’s true.
‘Sorry,’ Patrick corrected himself. ‘I don’t care about other people. Make me understand,