Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [129]
Now he wouldn’t be there when Lucy told her about Will. He wouldn’t even know when she did it. It wouldn’t be his decision.
Tom was angry with Lucy. And their mother had started to say something about her the other day. Something that Patrick had known could quickly turn into another life story, retold, in which Lucy had always been wrong for him, and not entirely good. He’d gone out of the room so he hadn’t heard it. It wasn’t what he wanted or needed, their animosity, even directed towards her. It didn’t help.
He felt it sometimes, though. Rage. His anger was different. Black, unctuous and acid. It rained on him sometimes like blows. And cleared as storms do, almost as quickly as it came. He never felt rage at the door to his home. Just sadness. And longing.
Bella answered, and threw herself bodily at him. He swept her up and held her tightly. ‘Sorry, Dad. We were in the garden. Ed just found the most enormous stag beetle. You’ve got to come and see it.’
‘Well…’
Ed appeared and wrapped his arms round Patrick’s legs. ‘It’s gone, thank goodness. It was disgustering.’
Patrick took one arm from Bella and reached down to ruffle Ed’s hair. ‘Hello, my boy.’
Lucy was the last to appear. No swing in her walk, no laugh in her eyes. She was thin. Too thin. She was wearing a low-cut T-shirt, and her collarbones jutted out sharply against skin that was pale again now, after the holiday. The last holiday. ‘How are you?’ she asked.
‘Fine.’
Natalie had told Tom that Alec was going to stay with Marianne – try to make it work. For an hour or so he had sat on the sofa and waited to feel something unpleasant. Satisfaction? Revenge? Maybe. But he hadn’t. Actually, it made the whole thing even more bloody pointless. None of them was going to be happy at the end of this horrible dance they had all done. Marianne would never be able to trust Alec again – or, at least, not for a long time. Alec would think of Lucy whenever he looked at Marianne, comparing, contrasting, missing, regretting. Lucy had lost Alec. Patrick had lost Lucy. We’re all worse off, he thought. What a pointless, dry, dreadful thing. Misery in layers.
Once she would have retorted that he didn’t look fine. And he would have smiled and replied that when people asked you how you were, they only really wanted to hear that you were fine. If you were worse than fine – if your cat had been run over, or your house had been repossessed, or your wife had had an affair and then left you – they glazed over with embarrassment and moved away. If you were better than fine, a little piece of them died. Wasn’t that how the quotation went?
And then Lucy would probably have kissed him lightly and told him to shut up and not be such a smartass.
He didn’t need to ask her how she was. He could see for himself that she was sad, diminished, guilty and lonely. It was written in her skin, and gave him no pleasure.
‘Have you got your stuff, guys?’ She was letting him have them overnight.
Bella and Ed scuttled off to collect their bags.
‘We’ll be at Tom’s,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘Is there room for you all?’
‘He’s away, actually.’
‘Oh.’
She didn’t ask, but he needed to fill the space: ‘He’s taken Natalie away somewhere.’
‘It’s all come together for those two, has it?’ Lucy folded herself further inside her cardigan.
Just as it has unravelled for us. ‘Seems so.’
‘I’m happy for them.’
‘Me too.’
For the first time they looked directly at each other. Then Lucy smiled the kind of smile where you press your lips closer together and force the corners of your