Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [123]
Lucy sat down opposite him, but he was speaking again: ‘But before you do, can I tell you where I’m coming from?’ She didn’t want to hear it, but what could she say?
‘I don’t want this to end. I don’t want to live without you and the kids. I don’t want any of the implications of what you’re saying, and what it means. I’d rather live with you, here, and know that I’m second best than live without you. I think I could do that, as long as you let him go.’ He was horribly afraid that he was going to cry. ‘I’ve loved you for ever, Lucy. I fell in love with you before I even saw your face, heard your voice. I don’t know how to have a life that doesn’t have you in it. You and Bella and Ed.’
Tears rolled down Lucy’s cheeks. ‘I can’t, Patrick. I’m sorry, I can’t.’
‘We can move away. I know it would be hard to see him every day. To keep seeing him. We could go anywhere you wanted. That job in Leeds, maybe I could get it. Or another.’
‘It wouldn’t work.’
‘But if you didn’t see him any more…’
‘Then there’d be someone else.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t want this any more.’
Patrick threw up his arms in exasperation. ‘What “this” are you talking about?’
Her voice got louder with his. ‘I don’t want you.’
That stopped him.
‘I don’t want you, Patrick. I’m sorry.’
He sat still, staring at the grain of the pine table in front of him. Why didn’t she want him? Why? He had never in all of his life felt so worthless. So broken. ‘I thought we were happy.’
‘We were. We were little h, small-town, quiet-life happy. I think there’s something else. I feel like… like I’ve seen it now. And it makes it impossible to settle for that kind of happy again.’
‘Even if Alec doesn’t feel that way?’
The very thought made her tremble, but she still knew the answer. ‘Even if he doesn’t.’
Patrick pushed back the chair from the table and got up. For a split second she thought he was going to hit her. Maybe she imagined it was possible because she wanted it to happen. But of course he didn’t. He was Patrick. He went to the french windows, opened them and went out into the garden. She continued to sit there, staring at the wall.
Eventually, she poured them each a large whisky and took it outside. Next door someone was watering their grass with one of those sprinklers that went back and forth. One corner of the spray came over their fence, landing on the leaves of the pots she had planted.
He let her sit beside him and drank the whisky.
Lucy took a deep breath and started talking: ‘We always call it you rescuing me. Everyone does. And you did. You scooped me up, after Will, and you gave me back to myself. You made me feel like it wasn’t my fault that he left me, that I wasn’t a disaster area that no one could stand to be near for long. I still don’t know what would have happened to me if you hadn’t done that.’
She knew that Patrick’s eyes were on her.
‘You gave me and Bella a home. And no one…’ tears were close ‘… no one could have been a better father to her. And then you gave me our Ed.’ She thought she could smell the little-boyness of him, and she inhaled. ‘Our beauti ful boy. And this life, this life. And I’ve been happy with you, Patrick. I swear I have.’
‘So how can that go away?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But it has?’
‘Yeah.’
She wanted to tell him more. ‘I don’t need rescuing any more, Patrick. I’m not that girl. But you still want to be that man. That’s what was so hard about the redundancy business. Not losing the job – I couldn’t give a shit about that – but you wouldn’t share it with me. You wouldn’t let me be a proper wife. You had to keep taking care of me, protecting me, rescuing me.’
‘So it’s my fault?’
She shook her head in frustration. ‘No. They’re separate things, really. That’s been truer and truer, over the years. It would have been a problem in the end, on its own, anyway.’ Was any of this making sense? ‘Alec came along, and showed me something different.’
‘Better.’
‘Different.’ Of course better.
‘And it isn’t going to pass. It isn’t a phase.’
‘I’m not proud of myself for any of this, Patrick, believe me. I wouldn