Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [128]
‘But now you know?’
‘Now I know. We’re home, back in our real lives, and I know. And he knows that I know. If you know what I mean.’ How many glasses of champagne had she had? ‘So it’s all okay.’
‘And the best bit is, you’re not going to have to do all that in-law stuff.’ Rose was in the middle of wedding negotiations with Pete’s mother and her own that made Kofi Annan’s work at the UN look like child’s play.
‘That’s right, Rose. That’s the best bit.’ Serena smirked. She didn’t really get Rose. She liked her, but she didn’t really get her.
‘Are you going to get married, then?’
‘Hold on. Give us a chance. We’ve only been together a couple of weeks.’
‘And twenty years.’
‘I’m not even sure I want to get married.’
‘Right!’ They all found this hilarious.
‘Rob’s been trying to persuade me that we should go to Las Vegas, get it done quick in one of those wedding chapels.’ Serena wrinkled her nose.
‘That sounds great.’ Rose was wistful. ‘No mothers.’
‘No way! Tacky in the extreme. At least, the one we went to was.’
‘And no one there who knows you to see how gorgeous you look,’ Susannah added. ‘Except the groom, of course, if he counts at all,’ said Bridget, sarcastically. Susannah raised an eyebrow at her sister.
Natalie nudged her friend. ‘Are you up for it, Serena?’
‘I might be.’ She smiled. ‘You never know…’
‘There must be something in the water…’ Natalie said, sipping champagne and beaming.
Lucy and Patrick
Patrick rang the doorbell at his own home, and waited for Bella or Ed to answer. How strange it felt to have a key that fitted into this door but be unable to use it. Because that would be going through a different door to a different world, and it wasn’t his any more. It would be to trespass.
He had asked, once, since he’d moved out, if not having Alec meant that she would have him back. Asked her if he could come home, and be, if not the person she wanted now, then maybe the next best thing, the person she had wanted once. The pity, sadness and refusal in her face had killed something inside him. He wouldn’t ask again.
And now all he had to do was convince himself to stop waiting for it to happen. People said was he sure it was all over. Her face had made him sure.
A second Saturday leisure-centre, McDonald’s father. Was that what he was going to be? The injustice of it stung behind his eyes and ribs. He hated everything about now. Camping at Tom’s. Watching Tom, so newly happy with Natalie. Lying at work, his new work, being guarded about his circumstances. And, most of all, he hated ringing his own doorbell to see his own children. But there was nothing he could do, was there? It wasn’t up to him. He had asked her and she had said no.
They had agreed, at least, not to have any big, heavy, final discussions with the children. They thought his new job was taking him away a lot. At least, that was what Patrick and Lucy had let them believe. Maybe it would make it easier, eventually, when they told them that he wasn’t coming home. Who knew what strange thoughts and feelings went through their minds? It was another thing he couldn’t bear to think about.
Bella knew something was up, though. He was sure of it. She watched enough crappy American-import TV on Saturday mornings to have grasped that there was more to it than a long commute to work.
He had thought more about Bella not being his bio logical child in the last month than he had in the whole of the rest of her life. It tortured him at night to think that he might have no claim over her. No rights in her life. That he might not sit, proud and triumphant, at her graduation, dewy-eyed at her wedding, then with her child on his knee. Tom told him that Bella would always love him, that Lucy would make sure of it. That he needn’t worry about it. But Tom wasn’t with him in the middle of the night. He was next door, in his own bed with Natalie, at the beginning of everything. So Tom couldn’t understand the fear.
It made him want to tell her. Last week, Ed had met a little schoolfriend in the café